You have always wandered outside our domain Playing and napping Needing only one syllable to express the joy A world of your own invention Beyond our naming We took you for granted Like roadside grass Hardly anyone noticed your disappearance How lightly your tiny paws had walked through Our ears and into the Gods Who will tilt his head and listen To your quiet leaving? And realize what we have lost? Your untamable wildness Was so much of our true nature No, you did not vanish You simply stepped out of our hasty vision Always towards some future gain Haunted by the unknowingness of the other world Willie, I refuse to mourn for you As humans mourn for their loss I am as suspicious as you are About my true belonging Purring in a parallel world With such equanimity as you stretch your limbs I am amazed that you look quite ready Becoming even fuller in your absence As your tiny silhouette leaps into a high branch While we close our eyes Lapsing into a solitary terrain Surely, it was your playfulness That held the universe together A space we are forbidden to enter We ponder and strive, trapped in a false construction of time As if performing some important task You, Willie, overwhelmed me with your insignificance Your powerlessness So young and yet so eternal "You have gone your sweet way," a Goethe would say You were never the obedient kind Always exploring You could stir up a storm without our permission Until we took a sudden pause in the middle of things To inquire of your whereabouts Did I just see your thin shadow rising up Growing larger, pressing towards me like monsoon clouds Swarming over the mountaintop That I can no longer ignore your strange presence And be astonished by it? Willie, how I long to enter The innocence that shaped you, protected you This itself is sufficient Needing no other vices to exist But you, forever remain outside my imagination Softly, your furry cheeks brush against our world As if saying you are having so much fun The exchange of shapes and forms Disguised in time With your dark eyes, curiously Even in the moment of parting Ready to greet the perpetual beginning Who has died? Willie, are we not the same matter that makes the stars I can see it so clearly The gentle reflection in your eyes A calm light humbly flows into everything Look, the waxing moon is rising The pensive air carries the aroma of a summer garden Like you, Willie, the night shadow is never quite fully in view I have left the door open I will sit in the dark and listen Perhaps in the slow hesitant hours of dawn I might hear the sound of you quietly sipping water Willie, how patiently you accompany us Into our own vanishing
PS. Willie was a stray cat briefly adopted my friend for a short time and he later disappeared.
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