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I ran, fearful, fleeing the demons
Turned, fighting
Fought, tooth, claw and nail.
Won and lost.
Killed the spirit evil,
Lost my cub.
Searching, searching, searching
I ran, fearful, but not fleeing.
Hunting.
Hunting for my blood, my kin, my kind.
Paws bleeding on the snow
Paws wounded, like my heart
But searching.
Seeking.
Smelling.
Finding.
Finally
My lost cub, cold and fading.
Fading and failing, needing warmth.
I found redemption
Found my cub
Loving
Licking
I had warmth to give
Enough for my poor cub
My cub, my warmth to save her
Curling, nesting, nursing
Resting through the snow and ice of winter
Spring burst upon us
Little cub bounding in the meadow
Reminds me of the joy
Life is full of song
My life returns for I
I who have lost so much
Have found a reason
To live and love.
27 comments:
Mimi,
This is wonderful. Raw and tender and compelling. You've conveyed the panic growing so well and the use of repeated words/alliteration builds layers to show the strength of the emotions.
Moving and brilliant.
I like the way you've told a story in this, Mimi, with a real emotional progression.
I thought we might as well have a wolf after all those sheep.....
Hm, wolves don't seem to excite as many comments as sheep!
Except from these guys.
No, no, don't worry, readers are here.
I enjoyed this, Mimi, and I love Wolves. They've reintroduced themselves in France (in the Mercantour national park, in the Alps), which some people think is great and all local shepherds think is a nightmare. I can well understand both points of view, but I do hope the wolves stay out of gunsight.
Good stuff, Mimi, I particularly like how it captures the wariness and the things that make people fear wolves, but then settles more on tenderness and joy.
I love wolves too. Anyone know what became of the ex-London zoo wolves? I thought at some point they were supposed to be reintroduced to the wild, in Scotland I think.
Thanks folks.
Munni - there is much debate about re-introducing wolves into Scotland.
I think everyone is waiting to see how the beaver experiment goes - and I am not being frivolous or suggestive, I mean real live wild beavers.
Many are keen, but those who own stretches of river are pissed off cos the beavers eat salmon.
Mind you, wolves might eat the beavers - who knows?
Just back from Patagonia where twenty pairs of beavers were introduced in 1946, in a failed fur production attempt. They bred like rabbits and ate (or drowned) most of the forest. Scotland should think twice.
They're cute, though.
Touching poem, mimi. Have you ever read Cormac McCarthy's The Crossing?
It's about a young shepherd who traps a female wolf that's been preying on his flock. Touched by her wild beauty, he finds himself unable to shoot her and decides to carry her across the border into Mexico and release her in the mountains there.
It's the only one of McCarthy's books that I've only read once. It was just too heart-breaking to read again. Highly recommended, though.
BTW, I assume you're joking about beavers eating salmon? Beavers are purely vegetarian.
BTW, Zeph...have you seen this site?
Check it out...some very funny piss-takes of Cameron's PhotoShopped poster.
Mish - is that true about beavers? I just wrote something that has been in the local papers here.
Don't tell me that the upper classes/landed gentry are lying to us poor serfs again?!
Mimi, here's that link again.
Your local paper is wrong, I'm afraid. Write them an irate letter...or demand a years free subscription.
Mishari, that site is excellent!!
this is my fave
(Apologies for absence from your own site btw, that 'real life' stuff has been getting in the way)
Isn't the problem with beavers that they dam rivers and spoil the fishing? Perhaps they kill salmon by making life difficult for them, all that masochistic swimming upstream thing probably doesn't work too well when Beaver Construction Ltd have altered the entire flow of the river.
Offie, haven't they re-introduced beavers in the Loire valley? But perhaps the French are keeping the numbers down with a little surreptitious trapping and eating...
Now, now, I thought you girls promised not to be frivolous or suggestive...
The problem with beaver dams is that they flood whole areas of forest which then wither and die. I have no idea what the implications are for the local fish.
I could be wrong, Zeph, but I had the impression that beavers don't damn the kind of fast-flowing rivers and streams that salmon battle they're way up.
I think offie's right though, they can kill off woodland and that may well have a knock on effect--tannin leaching into water, top-soil washed off and silting up streams, that sort of thing.
By the way, apparently, beaver is delicious (according to Ray Mears) and why not? They're sort of aquatic rabbits, no?
I think it's pretty clear that I know less about beavers than I do about wolves, even though one of my favourite books as a child was a battered copy of The Adventures of Sajo and her Beaver People by Mr Belaney, known as Grey Owl.
Mish is destroying many capitalist beaver myths here and I am seriously considering writing to the Press and Journal so all comments welcome.
But I never read Zeph's books - my warmth to beavers is simply Narnia and I am so incredibly cross tonight cos I just got Prince Caspian from the library and my DVD player has gone phut.
With Moray Council's disc in it.
Tomorrow will be a day of reckoning with sharp implements I do believe.
Mimi, before you mangle the player, does the DVD player just not come on at all (no power, no lights, nada)? If so, as a last resort, many such devices have an internal 2.5-3 amp fuse (usually accessible from the back) in addition to the 13 amp fuse in the plug.
It's there to prevent even a small surge from damaging delicate circuitry and blows really easily.
Remove it and wrap it in a bit of tin-foil and re-insert. That'll work until you can get a proper 3 amp fuse. Just thought it was worth mentioning...
Mishari, how useful you are. Tomorrow I shall dig out from the cupboard the CD player which mysteriously died on me, and see if the same applies.
I didn't see Prince Caspian, but I disliked The Lion, the Witch etc, mostly because I thought the children were incredibly weak. It's not easy to find kids who can act, but there are some, you'd have thought the film company could have looked harder.
But Prince Caspian was always my favourite one of the books, it was the first one I read, as a small person. I remember borrowing it from a tiny local library with brown lino on the floor and one bookcase of children's books.
Thanks for the hints on DVD players. Most bizarrely, this evening the thing worked! Just as I was about to attack, I thought, oh well one last try with the remote, and the whole thing sprang to life and I was able to watch Prince Caspian.
Enjoyable but nothing like the book. I did like Eddie Izzard as Reepicheep and I suppose that I will be succored into watching the next one.
And I will save those tips on buggered DVD players for the next time.
What do you do when the furs are dying?
That's us now.
Really really us. Mouse is dying and I don't have a clue how to deal. All I can do is cry. I really can't cope with this at all.
Mimi,
The only way to get through the dark times is to feel your way along. Cats are drama queens anyway, they will appreciate your emotions. Cry if you want to, your furs will not mind and your friends will understand why you are so upset as well.
Take care,
Pink x
I'm so glad Zeph posted this poem last week.
Today I had to say goodbye to my old furs. Tigster and Mousie: loved you so much and thank you for being my furs.
Tough to lose them both at once, Mimi, though as they were brother and sister it is quite sweet, in a sad way, that they went off together to the big sofa in the sky.
If you're needing to be cheered up a little, there's always this.
Oh Mimi, I'm so sorry.
I will follow Zeph's offering with this one.
If it's any consolation, when cats die, they go to cat Heaven, where the Cat Goddess (played by Eartha Kitt) strokes their throats, tells them they're good cats, feeds them Moist 'n' Chunky cat-food and gives them a catnip mouse.
We should be so lucky...
Thank you for these kind wishes. It really does help.
Today was rather horrid - all empty rooms and now tonight I am not wanting to try and sleep.
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