Animal Spirits

I stopped my breath at the red squirrel pup 

who caught my eye as she twitched in wait 

on the deer fence, over the tabby gate, 

for her brother to appear and to commence 

their matutinal game of chase and seize.  

Then, after a moment, she disappeared, 

reappeared on the oak trunk toward the creek 

with nobody on her tail, till with a back flip, 

giving nobody the slip, she skittered off, 

skittered back, then reappeared 

on the deer fence over the tabby gate.  

Her brother never plays this way, as though 

the object of the game were to play the game.  

I wonder if she misses her sister.  I remember 

when their mother led the three of them down 

into the sly world below their oak nest, 

and, sometime later, when I came across 

a squirrel’s unflinching tail and was overtaken 

by an image of the missing sister, full of play, 

seized by a red-tailed hawk, who played for keeps.  

The tabbies were long gone by then.  

Old Max — Our last? — one day just 

stopped eating.  Whether he, 

or something in him, knew it was time, 

I wish I knew.  One afternoon, 

I captured an idle picture of him 

on his blue garden chair, looking down 

and to one side, preoccupied with his life.  

The picture now curls on our refrigerator door 

with a number of bleached family photos.  

One moment he was outdoors, sitting 

right before me, the next he’d somehow 

leaped into the picture from within which he looks 

out now, like a poet from a poem left behind.  

The word gate does too much justice to the gap 

we snipped into the wire mesh of the deer fence, 

too small for a coyote, we hoped, though not 

for a tabby.  Or for me.  I could probably 

work my leg through, maybe even my head, 

though I might not be limber enough anymore 

to pull it back out.  

So how do I find my way to the gate 

of Earth and enter the Animal Kingdom?  

It’s no good me saying, I’m an animal, 

so I’m there already.  I’ve got an animal’s 

body.  But it’s not an animal.  I am.  

My brain waves are animated.  I feel them, 

though I don’t know them past knowing I’m alive.  

Any tabby scrabbling a paw under a door 

for something it just batted there 

would know what I’m talking about — living 

from one end of life to the other.  

And from there?  That’s where 

the shape of the door and the room it leads to 

dissolve, like darkness into light or vice versa.  

An animal’s spirit is more than its body, 

but it hangs onto it for dear life.  

When the body’s vital functions start 

tapering off, its animal spirit doesn’t 

depart.  It settles down, as if to watch 

something passing by — something 

I’m not at all ready to do.  Not just yet.  

I try to keep up with lives outside of mine, 

keep track of my symptoms.  If I notice 

things easing away from me, 

I’ll make my grip more fierce.