Dreaming The Milky Way

My wild predatorcat companion jet-black Artemis on four legs comes racing home up and over the patio fence

Coyote joy in yellow-green eyes fat-cat tail swirling like a propeller on a high-strung speed boat

Five dive-bombing barn swallows hot on her trail

For minutes the swallows rush the patio as she now settled safely next to me casually cleans all carnage from her paws and face

And I watch in wonder at the swooping feathered fierceness in such small packages

Feeling exhilaration my heart pounding as if it were my life

Some strange smallness in me wanting to make this into something us against them

Yet there is nothing personal here

Only a primal agreement to protect borders as much for the other as for themselves while knowing that the very nature of life the unthinkable demand of it insists that all borders get breached all sovereignty sacrificed each individual life devoured and reconstituted in service of the one life

This one life it is a great shape shifter

First it is a rabbit then it is a fat coyote dreaming rabbit then it is scat dreaming flowers who must be dreaming of bees

It is a woman singing opera in the shower then it is water saturating ceiling panels and flowing down the walls of a house to the earth then it is a tender green leaf pushing itself up between driveway pebbles

(In honor of my mother, Ruth Shenstone Harris Pelmas, who died suddenly in the shower just after her 75th birthday)