Some needs can never be filled, this poem reminds us.
SISTER CAT
By Frances Mayes
Cat stands at the fridge,
cries loudly for milk.
But I've filled her bowl.
wild cat, I say, Sister,
look, you have milk.
I clink my fingernail
against the rim. Milk.
With down and liver,
a word I know she hears.
Her sad miaow. She runs
to me. She dips
in her whiskers but
doesn't drink. As sometimes
I want the light on
when it is on. Or when
I saw the woman walking
toward my house and
I thought there's Frances.
Then looked in the car mirror
to be sure. She stalks
the room. She wants. Milk
beyond milk. World beyond
this one, she cries.
from Ex Voto, 1995
Lost Roads Publishers, Little Rock, Ark.
This Iris picture is for Delwyn. Doesn't my Iris look a lot like your mystery flower?
Two of my all-time favorite quotes:
Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 11
Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub;
It is the center hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel;
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room;
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there;
Usefulness from what is not there.
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"There is an Indian belief that everyone is a house with four rooms: a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual room. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time, but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not complete."
-- Rumer Godden, House With Four Rooms
