by David Chorlton
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| On and around The Feast of St. Francis, October 4 this year, many churches organize a Blessing of the Animals to which dogs, cats, bird, bunnies, ponies, chickens, and all creatures great and small are welcome. |
Here’s a cat who’d take
the dinner from a china plate but bless
her anyway; she doesn’t know
the rules of etiquette. Consider the coyote
blessed when he stops in the middle of the street
and looks back at a pedestrian
his wildness has touched. Bless the starlings
who were fruitful and
multiplied from coast to coast, and bless
the common pigeon for
turning waste lots into food. Bless
the rattlesnake who curls up at a trail’s edge
by stepping carefully around him,
and save
for the jaguar who returns to
ancient hunting grounds
a special blessing that will follow him through
darkness. Shall we dare
to shower favor on the rats who climb the final
daylight and cavort
in yards and vegetable beds? Or spare
an extra prayer for the Great horned owl
when he is done with ferrying souls
to comfort and a resting place?
When the Cooper’s hawk is waiting
for a mourning dove, be generous as this world
in which an ocean is the predator
and a river is the prey.
David Chorlton has lived in Phoenix since 1978, and has shared home with many cats, birds, and occasionally dogs. The creatures who visit his yard appear frequently in his new book Poetry Mountain from Cholla Needles in Joshua Tree, CA., who also published the poems his white cat Raissa wrote in the late Clinton years (of a very concrete nature) in a little book called Gilded Snow along with her owner's commentary.
