The difficulty to think at the end of day, When the shapeless shadow covers the sun And nothing is left except light on your fur—
There was the cat slopping its milk all day, Fat cat, red tongue, green mind, white milk and August the most peaceful month.
To be, in the grass, in the peacefullest time, Without that monument of cat, The cat forgotten on the moon; And to feel that the light is a rabbit-light In which everything is meant for you And nothing need be explained;
Then there is nothing to think of. It comes of itself; And east rushes west and west rushes down, No matter. The grass is full
And full of yourself. The trees around are for you, The whole of the wideness of night is for you, A self that touches all edges,
You become a self that fills the four corners of night. The red cat hides away in the fur-light And there you are humped high, humped up,
You are humped higher and higher, black as stone — You sit with your head like a carving in space And the little green cat is a bug in the grass. ~Wallace Stevens, from “A Rabbit As King of the Ghosts”
This summer has brimmed with fullness ready for emptying: a spilling over of light and sun and heat and life, almost too much to take in.
I tried to blend in, almost disappear into my surroundings, as evening fell, catching me just-so, immobile, captured by failing light as the day darkened.
Then I prepared to dream unthinkingly peaceful in the night when all is stilled anticipation.
With pulsing vessels in twitching transparent ears, both warming and cooling, aglow yet fading, my empty spaces are filled.
I welcome the relief of sitting still as a statue in the cool whiff of this misty August morning.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support daily Barnstorming posts
Please forgive me for forgetting. I wanted to go outside and look for you. I was told this was impossible.
I was instructed to stay indoors. But my words for you need sun. My heart needs air.
I love you Spring. I miss your warmth. Come unlock my door. ~Ethelbert Miller “Beloved”
I love you, Spring. But where are you? Nearly a week of chill winds and freezing temperatures put me back inside the house wanting to hide under the covers. Water buckets in the barn were frozen again, walkways were slick with ice, once friendly breezes threatened to knock me over with their force. This is not the Spring promised.
Come unlock my door, Spring. When our old apple tree toppled over in the northeast blow earlier this week, I identified a bit too much. The wind took advantage of a hollowed out rotten core the tree had been hiding for years. What might I be hiding inside that makes me just as vulnerable to forces knocking on me, even though I bear fruit as usual?
Please forgive me for forgetting: this world is at war with evil – families hiding in basements, subways filling with refugees, apartment buildings bombed. Now is when we are most fragile, exposed and wounded. Our lumpy exteriors are on full display waiting for spring to renew and cover us up.
I wanted to go look for you: Our farm cat decided the old apple tree lying on its side was a new perfect perch to keep surveillance for curious (and irritating) farm dogs without having to climb up high. There he sat on the fallen trunk, far enough above a corgi dog’s head to be essentially invisible although Homer could absolutely smell there was a cat with threatening claws nearby … somewhere. Just where that cat could be remained a mystery to a dog who is distinctly height-challenged.
Like my cat, I wait now in late winter — seeking the sun for my words and fresh air for my heart. And like my dog, I sense something potentially threatening is near, but because of my own limitations of perception, I have no idea just how close.
I was told this was impossible: may we weather the storms together may there be peace and warmth for all people may we find harmony as winter melts into spring.
cat hiding in plain sight, Homer too short to figure it out
This is my song, O God of all the nations, A song of peace for lands afar and mine. This is my home, the country where my heart is, Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine. But other hearts in other lands are beating, With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine. My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean, And sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine. But other lands have sunlight too, and clover, And skies are everywhere as blue as mine. This is my song, O God of all the nations, A song of peace for their land and for mine. So let us raise this melody together, Beneath the stars that guide us through the night; If we choose love, each storm we’ll learn to weather, Until true peace and harmony we find, This is our song, a hymn we raise together; A dream of peace, uniting humankind. ~Lloyd Stone and Blake Morgan
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support Barnstorming
Something about that nose, round as a licorice gumdrop and massively inquiring.
It brings the world to him, the lowdown on facts denied to us.
He knows the rabbit has been in the garden and where the interloper has traveled.
He knows who has wandered through the neighborhood and can sniff out the bad guys.
He would like to get a whiff of you. He has an inside track and will know more about you than you can imagine.
But for now, he has other concerns. The cat got into my pen and is making me nervous, so let me out now please. ~Lois Edstrom “Homer” from Almanac of Quiet Days
As young as I look, I am growing older faster than he, seven to one is the ratio they tend to say. Whatever the number, I will pass him one day and take the lead the way I do on our walks in the woods. And if this ever manages to cross his mind, it would be the sweetest shadow I have ever cast on snow or grass ~Billy Collins “A Dog on his Master”
Oh, Homer, dog of my heart, when I open the gate to your pen to set you free for farm chores, you race after your corgi buddy Sam who must get to the cat food bowl before you, but then you stop mid-run, each time, and circle back to me to say hello, thank you, jumping high enough to put that licorice gumdrop nose in my glove as a greeting, so I can stroke your furry brow without bending down. You jump one, two, three times – for those three pats on the head (I think you can count) – and then you are off again running, having greeted your human with respect and affection.
You watch me do chores with your nose in the straw, checking out the smells of the day – I work at the cleaning and feeding the ponies as the barn cat embarrasses you with her attention. You wait patiently, connecting your brown eyes to my gray eyes when you want my attention. You are listening carefully for those words that mean you can race back to your pen for breakfast – “All done!”
We speak the same language, you and I. Your eyes and your nose tell me all I need to know about what you are thinking.
And I have no doubt whatsoever you read my thoughts completely.
More poems and photos in this book, available to order here:
All afternoon by the window, sunlight— that great soft hand on my head. I could hardly move. And the sun spoke. It said, There now. Maybe your heart is wiser than you think.
Afternoon slowly rolled into evening. I will listen for that voice all the days of my life. ~Annie Lighthart, “The Blessing” from Pax
I seek His hand on my head when I need reassurance – that glowing warm sensation as sunbeams soak through my scalp and calm my overwrought neurons. I can’t help but close my eyelids and bathe in the feeling that all things are made new, myself included, and everything is going to be okay.
Even as the sun fades with the passage of hours in the day, the warmth within me remains. I remember the touch, I remember the wisdom, I remember the encouragement, I promise I won’t forget.
I’ll keep listening for His voice and know His hand rests on my head.
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support Barnstorming
She seems to hide all looks that have ever fallen into her, so that, like an audience, she can look them over, menacing and sullen, and curl to sleep with them. But all at once
as if awakened, she turns her face to yours; and with a shock, you see yourself, tiny, inside the golden amber of her eyeballs suspended, like a prehistoric fly. ~Ranier Maria Rilke from “Black Cat”
Pangur Bán and I at work, Adepts, equals, cat and clerk: His whole instinct is to hunt, Mine to free the meaning pent.
All the while, his round bright eye Fixes on the wall, while I Focus my less piercing gaze On the challenge of the page.
With his unsheathed, perfect nails Pangur springs, exults and kills. When the longed-for, difficult Answers come, I too exult.
So it goes. To each his own. No vying. No vexation. Taking pleasure, taking pains, Kindred spirits, veterans.
Day and night, soft purr, soft pad, Pangur Bán has learned his trade. Day and night, my own hard work Solves the cruxes, makes a mark. ~Anonymous Irish monk from “Pangur Bán”, translated by Seamus Heaney
Cally, our first adopted calico cat, was quite elderly and fading fast. Winter is always a tough time for barn cats, even with snug shelter, plentiful food and water. We had lost our 16+ year old tuxedo kitty just a couple months previously, and now Cally, not much younger, was not going to last much longer. She still got up to eat and potty, and still licked her front paws clean, but couldn’t manage much else. Her frame was thin and frail, her coat dull and matted in places, she had been deaf for some time and her eyes were rheumy. She spent her days and nights in a nest of hay on the floor of our horse barn, watching the comings and goings of horse hooves and people rolling by with wheelbarrows full of manure. One evening she allowed me to bring her a little rug to give her a bit more cushion and protection from drafts, as I wouldn’t be surprised to find her permanently curled up there the next morning. Her time was soon to come.
Cally was one of a litter raised in the mid-90’s by good friends, the VanderHaaks, on their acreage a few miles from here. When they had to make a move to a city on the east coast, their Cally and an orange colored kitty were in need of a new home. On arrival, the orange cat immediately ran into the woods, only rarely to be spotted at a distance for a few months and then completely disappeared, possibly a victim of the local coyote pack. Cally strolled onto our farm and decreed it satisfactory. She moved right in, immediately at home with the cows, horses, chickens, our aging dog Tango (who loved cats) and our other cats. In no time, she became the undisputed leader, with great nobility and elegance. There was no one who would dare to question her authority.
We knew Cally was unusual from the start. Tango initially approached her somewhat warily, given the reaction Tango elicited from our other cats (typically a hair raising hiss, scratch and spit). Instead, Cally marched right up, rubbed noses with Tango, and they became fast friends, cuddling together on our front porch whenever it was time to take a nap. They were best pals. Tango surely loved anyone who would snuggle up to her belly and keep her warm and Cally was the perfect belly warmer (as Garrison Keillor says, “a heater cat”).
Our free range rooster seriously questioned this dog/cat relationship. He was a bit indignant about a front porch communal naptime and would strut up the sidewalk, walk up and down the porch and perch on the railing, muttering to himself about how improper it was, and at times getting quite loud and insistent about it. They completely ignored him, which obviously bugged him, proud and haughty bird that he was.
One fall morning, as I opened the front door to go down the driveway to get the newspaper in the pre-dawn mist, I was astonished to see not just a cat and dog snuggled together on the porch mat, but the rooster as well, tucked up next to Tango’s tail. As usual, Tango and Cally didn’t move a muscle when I appeared, as was their habit–I always had to step over them to get to where I needed to go. The rooster, however, was very startled to see me, almost embarrassed. He stood up quickly, flapped his wings a few times, and swaggered off crowing, just to prove he hadn’t compromised his cock-sure raison d’etre.
No, I didn’t have my camera with me and I never found them all together ever again. The reader will have to just take it on faith.
After Tango died, Cally rebounded by taking on the training of our new corgi pup and making sure he understood her regal authority in all things, and demanding, in her silent way, his respect and servitude. He would happily chase other cats, but never Cally. They would touch noses, she would rub against his fur, and tickle his chin with her tail and all he could think to do was smile and wag at her.
So I figure a dog, a cat and a rooster sleeping together was our little farm’s version of the lion and lamb lying down together. We can learn something from the peaceable kingdom right outside our front door, a harbinger of what is possible for the rest of us. Despite claws, sharp teeth, and talons and too many inflexible opinions, it is possible to snuggle together in harmony and mutual need for warmth and comfort.
Our special Cally made it happen here on earth. Up in heaven, I suspect she has met up with Tango, and one rooster with attitude, for a nice nap on the other side.
The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the goat; and the calf and the young lion and the yearling together; and a little child shall lead them. Isaiah 11:6
Peaceable Kingdom by Edward Hicks, The Met
One-Time
Monthly
Yearly
Make a one-time or recurring donation to support Barnstorming
It takes a peculiar vision to be able to detect Precisely where
The field grasses brushed by blowing Stars and the odor of spring In the breath of sweet clover buds And the star-mingled calls of the toads In the threading grasses and the paws Of the clover brushing through the field Of stars and the star-shaped crickets In the ears of the sweet grasses And the tail of the night flicking Through the calls of the clover and the spring Stars slinking past the eyes of midnight And the hour of the field mouse passing Through the claws of the stars and the brushing Haunches of the weeds and starry grasses Threading through the eyes of the mouse And the buds of the stars calling With the sweet breath of the field
The knock on the door seemed urgent: – “did we know we have an injured cat?” – the pest control serviceman was spraying the perimeter of our house for carpenter ants and saw our young calico farm cat crawling along the ground in the bushes, unable to use her hind legs.
I grabbed my jacket and a towel to wrap her in, preparing for a quick trip to the vet clinic, but she had vanished by the time I got outside. I searched for an hour in all the likely places Nala typically hangs out but she was no where. I kept an eye out for her every day, calling her, but I never saw her or heard her distinctive voice.
Nine days later, she was on the front porch, thin and weak and hungry, meowing for a meal. She was walking but with still-weakened hind legs and two healing wounds on either side of her lower spine. Something very traumatic had certainly happened, but she had survived, using up several of her nine lives.
As I inspected the wounds, I began to surmise what may have happened: We have nesting bald eagles who spend time in the high trees around our farm house, watching for wild rabbits or other small prey. This cat is smallish, with plenty of white fur to be easily seen in the tall grass with sharp eagle vision. I suspect she was picked up by eagle talons as a tempting meal, pierced on either side of her spine to carry her away up to a treetop, but feisty as she is, she would have been more trouble than she was worth, so dropped from a significant height, causing a spinal cord contusion and temporary lower leg paralysis.
Little Nala has since recovered completely except for the bald patch scars on either side of her spine. She is a noisy communicator, insistent and bold. I think her loud voice and attitude saved her from becoming a raptor’s lunch.
Not many more lives to go, dear feisty Nala. Spend them well.
photo by Nate Gibson
A book of beauty in words and photography available to order here:
The first time I saw him it was just a flash of gray ringed tail disappearing into autumn night mist as I opened the back door to pour kibble into the empty cat dish on the porch: just another stray cat among many who visit the farm.
A few stay.
So he did, keeping a distance in the shadows under the trees, a gray tabby with white nose and bib, serious yet skittish, watching me as I moved about feeding dogs, cats, birds, horses, creeping to the cat dish only when the others drifted away.
There was something in the way he held his head, an oddly forward ear; a stilted swivel of the neck. I startled him one day as he ate his fill at the dish.
He ran, the back of his head flashing red, scalp completely gone.
Not oozing, nor something new, but recent. A nearly mortal scar from an encounter with coyote, or eagle or bobcat. This cat thrived despite trauma and pain, tissue still raw, trying to heal.
He had chosen to live; life had chosen him.
My first thought was to trap him, to put him humanely to sleep to end his suffering, in truth to end my distress at seeing him every day, envisioning florid flesh even as he hunkered invisible in the shadowlands of the barnyard.
Yet the scar did not keep him from eating well or licking clean his pristine fur.
As much as I want to look away, to avoid confronting his mutilation, I always greet him from a distance, a nod to his maimed courage, through wintry icy blasts and four foot snow, through spring rains and summer heat with flies.
His wounds remain unhealed, a reminder of his inevitable fate.
I never will stroke that silky fur, or feel his burly purr, assuming he still knows how, but still feed his daily fill, as he feeds my need to know: the value of a life so broken, each breath taken filled with sacred air.
He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart. Psalm 91:4
To be commanded to love God at all, let alone in the wilderness, is like being commanded to be well when we are sick, to sing for joy when we are dying of thirst, to run when our legs are broken. But this is the first and great commandment nonetheless. Even in the wilderness- especially in the wilderness – you shall love him. ~Frederick Buechner from A Room Called Remember:Uncollected Pieces
I usually think of wilderness as a distant peak far removed from anything or anyone. From my farmhouse window on a clear day, I can see a number of distant peaks if the cloud cover moves away to reveal them.
Or perhaps the wilderness is a desolate plain that extends for miles without relief in sight.
Wilderness is also found in an isolated corner of my human heart. I keep it far removed from anything and anyone. During my televisit computer work, I witness this wilderness in others, many times every day.
A diagnosis of “wilderness of the heart” doesn’t require a psychiatric manual: there is despair, discouragement, disappointment, lack of gratitude, lack of hope. One possible treatment to tame that wilderness is a covenantal obedience to God and others. It reaches so deep no corner is left untouched.
There come times in one’s life, and this past year especially, when loving God as commanded seems impossible. We are too broken, too frightened, too ill and too wary to trust God with faith and devotion. We are treading life simply to stay afloat.
During this second Lenten pandemic, God’s love becomes respite and rescue from the wilderness of my own making. He is the sweet cure for a bitter and broken heart.
We must have known, Even as we reached Down to touch them Where we’d found them
Shut-eyed and trembling Under a straw bale In the haymow, that She would move them
That night under cover Of darkness, and that By finding them We were making certain
We wouldn’t see them again Until we saw them Crouching under the pickup Like sullen teens, having gone
As wild by then as they’d gone Still in her mouth that night She made a decision Any mother might make
Upon guessing the intentions Of the state: to go and to Go now, taking everything You love between your teeth. ~Austin Smith “Cat Moving Kittens”
I’ve never known a farm cat who doesn’t hold something back in their loyalty to their human. They are never “all in” like a dog who lavishes love without thought or hesitation.
Cats live at a bit of a remove here, particularly if they grew up without being regularly handled and cuddled.
I don’t mind our barn cats’ autonomy and self-sufficiency as they need those characteristics when they live independently outside rather than as part of furniture in the house with us. They must view the rest of the world with some suspicion and caution, viewing things from afar with their keen eyes rather than leaping in without thinking.
As I go about my day on the farm, moving from shed to barn to garage to house, I have the distinct feeling of being watched. The reality is — they could run this place on their own if they needed to — and they do.
This was our pretty gray kitten, hence her name; who was born in our garage and stayed nearby her whole life. There were allergies; so she was, as they say, an outside cat. But she loved us. For years, she was at our window. Sometimes, a paw on the screen as if to want in, as if to be with us the best she could. She would be on the deck, at the sliding door. She would be on the small sill of the window in the bathroom. She would be at the kitchen window above the sink. We’d go to the living room; anticipating that she’d be there, too, hop up, look in. She’d be on the roof, she’d be in a nearby tree. She’d be listening through the wall to our family life. She knew where we were, and she knew where we were going and would meet us there. Little spark of consciousness, calm kitty eyes staring through the window.
After the family broke, and when the house was about to sell, I walked around it for a last look. Under the eaves, on the ground, there was a path worn in the dirt, tight against the foundation — small padded feet, year after year, window to window.
When we moved, we left her to be fed by the people next door. Months after we were gone, they found her in the bushes and buried her by the fence. So many years after, I can’t get her out of my mind. ~Philip F. Deaver, “Gray” from How Men Pray
Our pets are witness to the routine of our lives. They know when the food bowl remains empty too long, or when no one comes to pick them up and stroke their fur. They sit silently waiting.
They know when things aren’t right at home.
Sometimes a barn cat moves on, looking for a place with more consistency and better feeding grounds. Most often they stick close to what they know, even if it isn’t entirely a happy or welcoming place. After all, it’s home and that’s what they know and that’s where they stay.
When my family broke as my parents split, after the furniture was removed and the dust of over thirty five years of marriage swept up, I wondered if our cat and dog had seen it coming before we did. They had been peering through the window at our lives, measuring the amount of spilled love that was left over for them.
I can’t get them out of my mind – they, like me, became children of divorce. We knew when we left the only home we knew, we would never truly feel at home again.
Barnstorming 