I get up in the morning
and my first duty is to our cats
to ensure they have food and water
to satisfy their simple needs.
They have no urgency to gather in
the myriad strands and filaments
of my mind to focus on them.
Unlike me, they are without ego
or neurosis or compulsions
or impulse to chew and devour
startling new currents of thought
or to dissect and parse tradition
to produce some new light of intellect.
Their feline genius of simplicity
is my present focus of admiration
and desire.
But of course I could never dissolve
the accumulated humanity
focused in my solitary mind
and achieve the elegant ease
with which our cats occupy
their meager patch of earth.
This morning I have a yearning for simplicity of focus and devotion right in my own back yard, to care for the tomato plants, to wash the dishes with care and mindfulness, to simply listen to and watch my wife and say hello to my small universe and in the process, perhaps, absorb some precious particle of the cosmos.
