Sean Dietrich wrote a post this morning on his blog “Sean of the South” (http://seandietrich.com/).  Sean writes a post every morning. Judy Lewis Gray, as mentioned before put me onto Sean’s posts. i thank her again. Sean sends me his post each morning in an email to which i subscribe. i don’t know how he comes up with the stuff he comes up with every morning. i read them. Nearly all of them tug at my heart strings. The resulting music is enjoyable, soothing for the soul.

Sean’s post this morning was entitled “Dear Sean,” a letter from a fifteen-year old sad boy about his dog dying. Sean wrote of his own loss of a best friend. It made me recall my sad moment. When i went to find an old post with a poem about my friend Cass, a wonderful Labrador, golden in color, who was more part of me than just a friend, i discovered that old post had also vanished in the great website provider disaster several years ago.

So for “fifteen and sad,” Sean, and everyone else who has had to put their dog down, here again are my thoughts on Cass leaving me:

Cass Done Gone

a part of my soul left today.
the stubborn, ole cuss of a lab was more me than him
i worshiped the way he defied the world
until it no longer mattered.
some people told me
i would know when it was time.
i did not believe until
that silly old dog told me two nights ago and
told me last night it was okay.
he has been my mirror, my dreams, my soul
fifteen years.
i could tell him me like i can tell no other.
i am not ashamed of crying, feeling lost.
my granddaddy would scoff:
it isn’t the way it was back then.
there is an emptiness in my soul.
i am really not sure i’ll recover.
yeh, the pain will go in time;
the emptiness will be covered by events passing by,
but the hole will never be filled,
he was one of a kind to me.
he was me
he is gone.
i will bury his ashes at the top of the hill behind the house.
you can see the beach where he body surfed;
you can see the trails where he ran with abandon,
scaring hell out of coyote, rabbit, possum and birds alike;
if you turn around you can see the home he ruled
welcoming unknown people as if they were long lost friends;
taking on all dogs who foolishly entered his territory:
the doberman, the big shepherd, and all other intruders
stood clear after one encounter .

my feet feel cool now.
for most of his life, he would lie under my desk,
while i read, contemplated or typed with
his head resting on my feet.
the silence is awkward:
even in his sleep, he would grunt, wheeze,
kick the walls, chasing something in his dreams,
my dreams.
run sweet dog again;
pant with delicious tiredness after chasing the blues away;
scan the field with those keen sparkling eyes that
always read joy to me;
catch the next wave to bound into the bubbling surf
shake the misery with the salt wetness
from your coat of gold;
lick the face of someone
to give them unmitigated joy.

goodbye, sweet Cass.
goodbye, you joyful part of my soul.

gossamer in the micro-world we miss

she saw the photo,

laughed,
thought it inane;

in the morning when i saw the gossamer
in the dawn mist of the front lawn
i thought
beautiful, mysterious, another minuscular world;
for there in the waking hours
when we arise into our daily hurdles
of a complex world of humanity
with as many claims to living right
as there are humans,
out there in that yard
is a micro biosphere, if you will,
that shouldn’t be in the desert
except we have added water
from the Colorado and the Sierras snowbank
to allow another world
where gossamer beauty
in such an illogical place
has the purpose
to snare and kill game:
the ultimate and sole mission
of the minute spider
that wove this gossamer
on grass in deep in the high desert
off the coast of Baja;

i discarded her sarcasm
because
i thought the spider’s purpose
along with the gossamer
to meet its purpose
beautiful.

It was a morning after two rounds of Friday golf. i  played with my group of curmudgeons as usual; had a beer and lunch, and then joined my Pacific Tugboat friends for the Propeller Club tournament (the Propeller Club is an association of businesses dedicated to supporting all things concerning the well-being of San Diego Bay).

So when i woke up, i was not particularly energetic. Thirty-six holes of golf are now pretty demanding for this old man. But what the heck?

So for a change, i woke up second. Whoever wakes up second naturally makes the bed. That is when i had my first morning encounter with our indoor cats.

i like cats. However, i’m not too keen on indoor cats. My older daughter Blythe has had indoor/outdoor cats all of her life. Up until these two, all of my cats were indoor/outdoor. i think they should do their natural thing. But in our neck of the woods in the Southwest corner (okay, okay, our neck doesn’t really have woods, just high desert weeds and low-lying acacia, usually thorny, and not fun in the ten months of dry).

But my younger daughter Sarah got a kitten while she shared a house with other college friends. We had given up on outdoor cats because we had lost four to the snakes, owls, bobcats, hawks, foxes, falcons, and coyotes in the open space surrounding our home.

Sarah moved back home for her last two years at San Diego state, bringing that cat with her, the indoor cat named Dakota who had no desire to go outside after a mad dash into Halloween stormy weather for more than two weeks at the SDSU house. She was a sweet domestic cat, unlike most cats i’ve known.

Sarah recognized her mother was a fanatic cat lover. So when she began packing for her move to Austin,  she went and acquired another cat named over arguments about what to name this black and white tom from “BW” to “Bruce Willis” to the common referral to him as “Bruce” (me) and “Brucie” (Maureen).

To complicate things , Sarah couldn’t take Dakota to Austin. She moved into her sister Blythe’s home shared by Jason, Sam, two dogs, and at least two outdoor cats. They all recognized an indoor cat was implausible in such an evironment.

So, the Southwest corner Jewell’s ended up with two indoor cats.

It’s not all that bad since i remembered to always close the door. They are entertaining.

For example, when i began making the bed this morning, i heard a slight noise and turned around to see Dakota.

She was waiting patiently but anxiously for me to finish making that bed. You see, that bed is her solace, her safe place for the majority of the day.

Since there is a lot of cat hair involved with sleeping on our bed and Dakota prefers to burrow, Maureen created a cat pad, old sheet haven for the princess.

Yes, the princess. Dakota relishes the role.

So after i finished the bed and completed a couple of other chores, i returned to our
bedroom and found Dakota in her usual spot.

She is there every day as soon as her haven is prepared properly. In the afternoon, she comes out and lays on Maureen’s lap while Maureen is reading and continues this practice through the evening. Occasionally, very occasionally, she will do something radical and jump up on my lap while i’m watching a baseball game or reading.

But the bed, under that old sheet is her place. She even looks a bit cross if i sneak my phone nearby to take a photograph. i mean that spot is hers. Hers. Period.

Then we have Bruce. He will eventually wander into Dakota’s lair and being careful not to disturb the princess, will lay on top of the pillows for a brief rest. But in the morning, he is bouncing off walls, demanding to play, drinking out of the kitchen faucet, letting us know his needs with a few well-placed meows.

As i said, i’m not particularly fond of the idea of indoor cats. But i’ve grown attached to these two.

And in the morning, especially mornings when i’ve done something old man stupid like playing two rounds of golf the previous day. i can stiffly move about until i experience these two indoor cats. Then, they make me smile. My day starts on a good note.

That’s enough.

The FB post i shared today had a link to a poem of mine. Unfortunately, about two years ago, my web-service provider took a header and lost my previous posts forever. This is the poem i mentioned that was from that link.

Grand Canyon

Snow
until the lights hit the banks of the roadside,
blurting whiteness into the driver’s eyes,
it had not revealed its presence in the night.

Driver:
at the wheel since L.A. mid-morning,
staring bleakly at the white
long since ceasing to distinguish colors and shades,
reacting to only black and white.
recognizing the significance in the blanch of
late night white,
he slowed:
those uphill climbs around the curves
had brought them to the mountains
sunk in.

Car.
Slipping slightly, it slid over the median
into the glazed parking lot of the inn.

Bar.
Sunny, bearded cowboy
singing in the bar
accompanied by his guitar,
wired for sound:
electronic Tumbling Tumbleweeds.

Imagination?
shabby dirty man alongside
white robed man with wool-hooded jacket, looking like
Jesus in Pomona, returning to Sambo’s
after turning heads by asking for five balloons
and announcing,
“I’m going to bag some heroin.”
a real bad effort to impress
i guess.

Holes in the mountains.
snow outside is real;
the cowboy has sung his song,
turned off the amplifier;
daughter, curled beneath the covers,
is sacred.

Full day:
grand canyon, cowboys, and
white robed, doped up Jesus in Pomona
and
sleeping daughter in the snow.

Grand Canyon, Arizona
December 21, 1981

It was just a game, just a baseball game.

Last night’s game in Los Angeles was one game in a 162-game season of Major League Baseball, making it even more insignificant when the money-grubbing owners and media expanded the season from 154 and added playoffs to precede the World Series so we could watch the end of the season in ridiculously cold weather rather than the way baseball was supposed to played. Summer?

It was a game between the high-priced spread Dodgers and the margarine-priced Padres. The Dodgers are supposed to win the division and challenge the Cubs in the National League to win that World Series in much better weather than in what the Cubs would play.

That remains a possibility. The Padres finishing last in everything, as predicted by everyone who doesn’t hope like me against all odds, are likely to do just that. Last.

They are young, very young, and the know-it-all, at least more than any sane human would want to know about baseball, say if you are young, you lose. The probability the know-it-all’s are right is pretty good this year. The Padres don’t have a lot of starting pitching.

Then this grandfather of the Padre squad pitched this game. This one insignificant game. The next morning, i read this account of the grandfather: http://m.mlb.com/news/article/222312504/clayton-richard-leads-padres-on-off-the-field/?game_pk=490117

Clayton Richard was the backup quarterback at Michigan before he turned to baseball for a living and who had a decent year or two some time ago before getting picked up last season and returning to the Padres after the Cubs dismissed him.

i spent a significant portion of my life thinking about leadership. It was my job for over twenty years, and then i facilitated others thinking about it for a while more, even wrote a column about it. When i read the account of Clayton Richard communicating to his young teammates before the season started, i thought, “Now that’s leadership.”

Even if it’s only a game, it still makes me feel good.