Time capsules can teach us a lot about maintaining perspective.

 

“The Cat” (In the Cat’s Eye, 2009), is about that point, about forty years ago, when I realized that material things all ultimately perish, but the life lessons of my childhood had persevered and were a constant in my life.

The “tiny crystal ball” is a remnant of my childhood that rests in my mind’s eye, and has helped me to see a little bit of the future, as well as the past.

I have a real one (although not the same one) from my children’s games that I keep on my desk to remind me of the things I learned “in my mother’s garden”.

This will probably be my last post for a few days, as I don’t believe I will have access to wi-fi service for a while.

Glenn K. Currie

 

The Cat

 

A cat waits by my door.

A visitor from the past,

Escaped from the mixing pot

Of watercolor memories.

He silently sits by the dish

Where pieces of my mother’s garden

Come to rest.

 

He stares unblinking,

Seeing me as a child,

Remembering me from decades ago.

I had stroked him for luck,

And played with him on sunshine days

When we lived in the hour

And the certainty of tomorrow.

 

I buried him by a catnip bush

On a crimson, autumn afternoon.

A day when the wind

Persuaded the white oaks

To let their golden leaves fly.

When promises were made,

Then forgotten in the aging season.

 

Only the cat survived,

Finally working his way to the surface

Among remnants of the cardboard time capsule.

His green iris was reborn in the sunlight:

A tiny crystal ball

Telling me what he had learned

In my Mother’s garden.