Archive for July, 2009

She’s leaving home, Bye-bye
Sang the Beatles in sixty-five
It never used to make me cry

That June endless rain
Mercilessly soaked the days
And robbed us of summer evenings

The showers merely accentuated
The loss of children who graduated
In a storm of blue gowns

Liberty’s arm rose above the horizon
As the sun dropped below the clouds
That month the kids got away

Did I say it rained every single day?
The ceiling finally fell down
To reveal raw roof timbers

A blue dome of twilight sky
A mild breeze wafted by
With the faintest note of something sweet

Maybe it was relief

The night before his daughter was leaving home for college, Grady Dome was nervously brushing his dustmop of white hair in front of the bathroom mirror and wondering how early they should leave for Pittsburgh when a small animal fell out of his hair.

At first he thought it was a baby raccoon, wide-eyed and startled, peering up at him from the floor. But when he cautiously picked it up he saw it was a black and white kitten, or rather a still young cat, twitchy and ready to bolt for the nearest dark corner. It wriggled out of his hands but Grady managed to corral it into a wastepaper basket and cover the top with a face towel.

Grady wasn’t so happy to find a strange animal on his hands. He already had a bossy fat housecat, Miss Venus, a Maine coon with a luxurious coat that shed all over his small apartment no matter how often he brushed her. She was padding around in the hallway, meowing to be fed for the umpteenth time that day. He imagined Venus would react to the interloper with a lot of hissing and spitting, maybe even a fight. Grady would have to bring the kitten to a shelter, a bothersome chore, since he always felt a kind of pity, even disdain, for people on the street carrying animals in boxes.

The kitten cowered in the bottom of the wastebasket when Grady picked it up to take it—where? He didn’t know where the nearest shelter was. He’d have to make a call. Who? 911? Hi, a cat fell out of my hair and I need to drop it off somewhere? As these desultory notions limped feebly through his brain, the kitten took the initiative and sprang for the sill of the open bathroom window, the nearest and most likely exit except that Grady lived on the fifth floor.

Grady had never closely inspected the exterior of his apartment. As far as he knew, there might be a ledge out the window that extended to the roof of an adjoining building. It wasn’t likely; he’d never seen any such ledge, but he lowered his eyes and gave the cat a little push anyway. It twisted back and caught the bottom of the raised window screen with its front claws, its hind legs dangling over open space. Merciful gods the little beast was tenacious. But the window hadn’t been his idea. If a cat suddenly appears in your house, out of the blue or out of your hair, and then just as suddenly leaps to the window, well, whose fault is it if there’s an accident?

But the bugger complicated matters entirely, clinging there, scared to death. Grady shook the screen, which promptly fell out of the window frame and clattered to the street below. Shit. The cat still huddled on the shallow sill outside the window. Grady felt terrible about it when he gave it another good shove. He didn’t see it tumble through the air. He didn’t see it land safely, if a little shaken, on the sidewalk. A moment later he noticed two elderly women turn and look up in his direction.

When Grady drew his head inside, the kitten somehow scrambled over the windowsill again and shot toward the hallway. Nine lives? Impossible. But it was Grady who was reborn, if only a little tiny bit. He decided that Miss Venus might learn to like the kitten after all.