PHIL DONAHUE ~

 

1935 ~ 2024

MICHAEL ONDAATJE ~

 

November

Where is my dear sixteen-year-old-cat

I wish to carry upstairs in my arms

looking up at me and thinking

be careful, dear human

Sixteen years. How many days since

I found you as if an urchin in a snowstorm

and you moved in assured

learned the territories of the house

and what became your garden

Only now do we see the horizon

where you pushed two or three times

then slipped into

Was it too soon or too late

that last summer of your life

when we watched your walk

down to a river to take a sip

from its ongoing flow

Oh Jack I miss your presence everywhere

in the corners of rooms, in every chair,

or nesting in a cardboard box

Take me back where the past can again enter

those early remembered rooms, our snowbound street,

lift me upside down in your arms, I cannot stand it

I need a journey too. Have I slept my life away,

do I understand anything? Will I wear a bell

like yours into the afterlife where language

no longer exists and we gather only linked sounds

like oars from a passing boat,

                                                 those few syllables

to recall tenderness

You no longer wait for us

All day long, Basho wrote,

A lark sings in the air

Yet he seems to have had

Not quite his fill

_________________________

Michael Ondaatje

A Year of Last Things

Knopf, 2024

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