The cat and I

The cat and I had fallen out of love.We had been dear to one another, but now, after so many years, she hated me and I was short with her every meow. In her days she wanted a sort of stillness I couldn't muster - I wasn't ready to be old! My mind could not understand the wrinkles, the gray. Beneath that all I was a young man still. But the cat knew.
The cat was awake to every whisker that curled, and contentedly lay herself by the fire, relishing the rest that tired bones can demand. She licked her bowl clean, and herself, with stiff, practiced ease. But I could not contain myself in my old wing chair - I could not content myself with the silent, unnoticed, imminent immobility as I began to put myself to my final sleep. So I walked and paced and grumbled and drank, and the cat - the cat watched, blinking sleepliy from a middling perche near the warmth of the hearth.
Perhaps I had had a little too much to drink on evening, but I found myself stretched out in my favorite chair, my head quite fuzzy, and the cat close at hand, looking curiously at me. "How do you do it?" I demanded, my voice hoarse form my own quasi-stupor. I put out a soft fingertip and tapped her lightly on the nose.  "How - do - you - make it all so easy?" and I fell back a little in my chair, surprised at how the impact bothered my old shoulders.
"Harrumph," I said, and then reddened at the thought of how old my own behavior had become. I was a walking... I was interrupted by a polite mew and my cat's dainty foot on my lap as she stepped, still graceful, on my knee and then quickly lay down and began to lick a paw.
"You know," she said, nonchalantly, "it's really not as bad as all that."
On a dark, colorful gust of liquor fumes, I tried to compute her words. The dreaminess of my alcoholic hze took the edge from my surprise, and I looked at her bitter rather than shocked.
"My life isn't over," I stated back, slurring. I realized my nose was running slightly, and moved a sleeve to swipe it clean.
"Of course not," she scoffed, among a mouthful of fur that was particularly recalcitrant. "But you aren't dead yet, and you're not dying tomorrow." She stopped her self-bathing and, purring rustily, lolled back in practiced ease. "Just enjoy it," she said quietly, "You've earned your rest."
I looked at her, despairing. I didn't think I had. My life had been, ultimately, incredibly dull. Oh, the odd excitement, but for the most part, what had I done?
"You've lived, Charlie," she replied, her eyes half-closing. "That's enough for anyone."
I frowned. It wasn't enough for me.
She sighed and then, suddenly, her bright eyes, those eyes that had been closing slowly for years, burned into mine. A strange purr echoed in my ears.
I must have fallen to sleep. It was a drifting sensation: perhaps the alcohol had overwhelmed my aged nerves. My dreams were real and surreal as I had never felt before. Transported through times and spaces. I was in Paris, 1920, drinking absinthe. I was in Berlin, in Dublin, in Istanbul. I walked through a harem, I felt their sadness. I killed a man and watched the life leave him. I drowned. I climbed the peaks of Nepal, flew through the jungles on the waves of river wind. I toasted the great, toasted the wicked, and felt myself turn from bad to good to bad again. Again and again, the colors of life threw their panoply of activity about me; again and again, I saw the shadows, the light. I stood, exstatic, among the ruins of Greece, and as my body thrummed with a song to the gods, I spied the tail of a cat.
I never truly awoke. I surfaced on the carpet, the dying embers of the fire glowing by me, the cat curled by my side. How glad I was to be home, to be at rest. My heart still raced and my chest was tight. I reached to stroke the cat's small, curled spine. She looked up at me sleepily, and I started, realizing her eyes were completely white. She had gone blind. I stroked her gently, and then scooped her up tenderly in my arms.

"Time for bed," I said. "I am tired."

Summer/Passion

Long summer days
Sleepy in the afternoon
Of their season.
Hot and tight words
Languish when the sky is blue.

Clouds come out to dance
At night, under the stars.
My heart warms and bleeds,
I miss you.

The leaves are still dry
On the long grass - still green,
The green never dies here
It holds strong and true - like time.

Planes overhead
Tell the stories of
Passing action,
But passion is too strong
For days like these.

The Tree

There was once a Tree. It lived in a forest, and it was just like all the other trees. Together, they were young saplings, and in the morning the sun would rise on them, their heads nodding in the golden light, and in the evening, the breezes would blow on them, and small birds would call to one another joyfully from within their young, green leaves.
The Tree was just like all the others. And it was pleased.
But in time, the rest of the trees grew. They grew tall and broad, and the Tree grew only a little. In the day, the sun's warmth dappled it through the screen of others, the night breezes caressed it only in small, stolen breaths, and the birds built there nests in loftier places.
The Tree, now wakeful and unhappy, could not rest at night with the dreaming forest. Instead, it stared ever at the moon when that silver lady rose and fell in the sky. It strained to see her through the broken sky it could see, and every evening when the pale light fell upon it, it sighed a soft sigh, a small sigh, a sigh of relief. It didn't know why.
The days were raucous with the noise of the forest, the tall trees rustled mightily, and the Tree was lost. But in the night, only the silent moon lit the leaves and branches, and only the Tree watched her.
There came a night when the Tree was gripped with a great sadness. It had been sad before, but this sadness was like waves, this sadness was like floods. The pain within it rent and tore, it burned. The moon had not yet risen, and the Tree feared it might never rise - it might never rise again. In that moment, it knew it must find the moon, that if it didn't, it would perish and become yet another part of the forest's story, a story of the dead that fed the living.
It cried out in the way a Tree can, waving its branches, rustling, creaking, straining, and little by little, it felt the earth release it. First the root that was not quite covered was allowed free, and then the roots that spanned around it. Beautiful, they came up from the ground like vines, living and breathing, freed from the moist earth, free from the darkness. Until, finally, the Tree's heart root also was free, and the Tree, transcendent, terrified, beautiful, moved from its home, the place it had always been, and slipped from the forest, its roots like a thousand living ribbons, carrying it quietly and effortlessly out.
The Tree reveled in the joy of it, in movement and elegance and the freedom. It flew through the sleeping woods, and finally came to the openness on the edge. The place it had never been. Without fear, as if in a dream, it stepped onto the long grasses, its roots playing and dancing around it. And then it saw the moon. She had risen from the East and it had not noticed her pale, perfect light in its journey.
It stood, perfectly still except for the ever-moving, ever-undulating roots. It soaked in the silver of the moon, the brightness of the stars, and felt freed again.
And then it began to move - to dance - across the field, this way and that, spinning, leaping, stretching. The great moon above it seemed to get closer as it did so, the Tree, free, the moon, pouring out its love in white waves.
Today the Tree stands alone in the field. It is not a tall tree, but it is a beautiful one. Birds come to roost in it, as it stands alone in such a place, and it is happy. Each day it stands green and good under the sun, but it waits truly for the night, when the darkness shows the silver of the moon.