Perspective

… might be the same as perspicacity, allowing one to see

in different directions … indifferent directions, not mattering

if back or forwards, a long way away or right up close to the eye.

I am writing on computer. My hand doesn’t flow. But the words 

flow, so in that way the writing is flowing. It goes where my mind 

wanders. A smattering of images, of small recognitions.

Behind my eyes, my little black cat comes walking. (I only

closed them a moment, drifting off.) Up across my lap where

I sit at my desk, as if floating smoothly from the floor ... further.

In life she would jump on the couch, traverse the surfaces

of TV table (in front of the screen, ignoring it), then low cupboard

onto coffee table, along my desk behind laptop and printer –

reaching at last the chest of drawers where she stood to gaze 

through the glass of the sliding door's big window, thence at last 

into her cosy cat bed high on top of her tall scratching post.

What did she see when she stared out into the yard and up

over the slats of the fence? Nothing I could ever discern; but cats, 

Google tells me, have a different, more inclusive kind of vision.

She never before walked across my lap as if it was a thoroughfare,

head down, focused forward. My lap and arms were refuges,

places to stay and nestle in and purr; her perspective filled, right here.

Now, does this lone visitation, already two weeks and a half since she 

left the physical world, carry the simple message of moving on? If I seek 

to keep her close, is my perspective distorted? In that time she has been 

far, she’s been utterly gone – unlike all my other cats

who insistently, happily haunted for days, weeks, even months

after their bodies had left. (She was never like any other cats.) 

It’s a good telescope I have, I decide. At any moment I can choose 

to turn its intended direction, bringing her image up close, filling my view. 

Or let it rest as the maker designed, seeing her small form recede …

She was a wise little thing, grounded in reality and now: what was so 

in any moment. Sometimes she treated me as her mother; sometimes 

her kitten who needed to be taught. She had enormous stores of calm.

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United, for Friday Writings #242: Perspective. It's attempting to be a zuihitsu, a form I'm recently exploring somewhat uncertainly.

Gathering

I gather trinkets now. Indulgences. Now, at last, when my life grows late. 

A silver ring like a fox; earrings like silver roses – though why I need them I don’t know, knowing we can take nothing with us. Nothing, perhaps, except our memories. 

Will you remember me? Now, I know you do; but always?

‘Shall we meet again?’ I asked the seer, soon after you died. He looked, it seemed, into some kind of space, at once inner and cosmic. After a few minutes, said, ‘Nothing surer.’ Then, after another pause, ‘But not in this time.’ 

Well, duh, I didn’t want to encounter you next as a new infant and I an old lady!

Then again, I want always to encounter you. Whichever way you come, whatever body you’re dressed in. 

There is no body you inhabit now. (Well, not as far as I know.) There is the one I remember … in which to dress your soul … your soul which I also remember.

The trinkets are simply symbols. I wish they might also be signals. Do you receive them, in the ether somewhere?

Symbols.     Signals.     Sigils?

I fill them full of intent.

Exploring the zuihitsu form: 'following the brush' – or the movement of the imagined brush.

Sharing with Poets and Storytellers United, for Friday Writings #237: Favourites Revisited in which I invite participants to identify a favourite prompt and write a new piece inspired by it. When I came to do that for myself, I discovered that there is no particular subject I prefer, but that I most like prompts to which I am inclined to respond using form, particularly some form I feel I'm not adept with and need to explore. One of my current favourite forms to fit that bill is a style of prose poetry called the zuihitsu. I'm not sure I'm even getting it right – but making the attempt is one of my poetic pleasures.

From the Sky

(Zuihitsu)

From the sky is rising delirious music – light and sound together, singing and dancing. I look to the clouds; they swirl and disperse and re-integrate. They move constantly, but gentle and slow.

Unless storm comes, then they agitate and deepen, they seem to scowl.

But the sky does not scowl at me, I won’t believe it. From the sky has always come my help, my source of wisdom. Those eyes in the sky that see me clear and watch over me. Those voices that make new sentences in my soul, which I then hear as wisdom, as protective advice. 

Obey the voice of the sky! Then watch the clouds, and move like they. Don’t cower; they’re only going dancing.

I make of my dreams a cloud. I make of my cloud a veil. I drop it over me. It hides me. It conceals me from the world. It keeps me safe. Inside that veil I can soar, I can sing.

I walk out into the world. I am wrapped, invisibly to other people but not to me, in a cloak like fine-spun silk, a cloak of sky.

People don’t see this, but trees do … and birds, and dogs and cats … 

Some young children see it too, I know as our eyes briefly meet.

Written for dVerse Meeting the Bar: Zuihitsu. (Does this meet the form? I'm not sure. It's my first attempt. 'Follow the brush,' we are told. So I followed my random thoughts.  Is zuihitsu the same as stream of consciousness? I'm not a fan of  James Joyce, nor even Jack Kerouac ... but I do love Kimiko Hahn, who has done much to introduce zuihitsu to the Western world.)