A Branch that Held
It’s a vibrant summer afternoon
when I step up on the windowsill.
The sun is bright, the daylight warm,
but dusk has not yet cleared away.
The grass blades dance, the breezes hum;
the birds compose their rhythms slow.
And close, the lonely tree I planted
what seems a million lives ago.
I breathe it in and hold it there,
captive in my anxious heart,
afraid that if I let it go,
I’ll walk alone a stranger path.
Hours pass, or maybe days —
it matters not, this moment on.
Time is now my docile slave:
I do not chase; it does not run.
I stand and stare; I see but don’t.
I know not what I’m waiting for —
perhaps a gust to wipe away
the fate I wrote in flimsy scrawl.
Perhaps a heavy, pouring rain.
Perhaps a mighty cyclone.
Perhaps a tempest could erase
this dire path that I have drawn.
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At last, my eyes — I let them close,
but fly they open with dismay!
For on a feeble branch above,
I see a helpless kitten sway.
Without a thought, my body stirs —
my feet slide off the window, blind —
but stop upon my bedroom floor:
the babe has not been left behind.
The mama leaps up, swift as storm,
her jaws upon her baby’s neck.
She lifts the tiny, mewling thing
safe upon a stronger branch.
For moments, in a daze I look —
watch the mother and her child.
Unguarded, pours a stream then forth:
every sorrow stuffed inside.a
A puny creature, nearly trivial —
still, it had a thread to grasp.
I’d rushed to save its tiny form,
yet myself I would have let collapse.
I see what I had sought so long,
standing on this window ledge —
anything to break the fall,
anyone to pull me back.
At length, I leave the window side,
my heart now soft and placid.
My feet are light, the tears have dried,
and in me something solid.
Perhaps I’ve found what I awaited —
something pulled me back at last.
Not a gust or rain or storm,
just a little mama cat.
