I knew an angel once

 

I don't have proof, but I know people who do. Angels fly above or walk among us, protecting us, shadowing us until we have sense enough to shadow them. I keep thinking I knew an angel once, my little sister in fact. She lived and loved, hid her angel wings living right under my nose, shadowing me when I should have been shadowing her, watching the way she lived, noticing how she responded to nature and to the world around her, planting flowers, creating happiness, and defying all attempts to make her change.

I can talk about it now, but I still can't reveal her name, so I'll just call her Callie, a girl-child born against the odds to a couple who divorced, leaving her on her own with no one to guide her and nothing to indicate she was special or loved for her spiritual beauty. But she was loved, and when she died, it took years to recover from the loss. 

She was loved if not all of the time, at least some of the time, enough of the time for her to grab a moment or two, slip them into her pocket and store them away like precious gems. When she was feeling down and out—and you could see it in her face, it seemed as though she cashed in those precious jewels, enjoying memories, telling a joke, performing acts of kindness, or admiring flowers blooming in an alleyway.

That's how she survived after he moved away, leaving a mother and nine older children to survive on their own and a baby in a crib. Callie was only six months old, but she conducted herself like a grownup, keeping quiet when the going was rough and rarely crying. She seemed to know when it was not appropriate to bring attention to herself. She seemed to flow with the spirit of the universe, and when she smiled, it was like receiving a precious gift. 

When thinking of how I failed to cherish those precious moments in time, I find myself in a state of disbelief and grief. But I know Callie understands how self-absorbed people can be and I know her heart is big enough to forgive me. Maybe I will meet her again in another lifetime, or in Heaven if I follow her guidance.

 Every poem

Every poem has its own sense of rhythm and sometimes a clear sense of rhyme. What you anticipate from the onset is often not what you find. 

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Year of the Cat

Al Stewart

On a morning from a Bogart movie
In a country where they turn back time
You go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre
Contemplating a crime
She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolor in the rain
Don't bother asking for explanations
She'll just tell you that she came
In the year of the cat

She doesn't give you time for questions
As she locks up your arm in hers
And you follow 'till your sense of which direction
Completely disappears
By the blue tiled walls near the market stalls
There's a hidden door she leads you to
These days, she says, I feel my life
Just like a river running through
The year of the cat

While she looks at you so cooly
And her eyes shine like the moon in the sea
She comes in incense and patchouli
So you take her, to find what's waiting inside
The year of the cat

Well morning comes and you're still with her
And the bus and the tourists are gone
And you've thrown away your choice you've lost your ticket
So you have to stay on
But the drum-beat strains of the night remain
In the rhythm of the newborn day
You know sometime you're bound to leave her
But for now you're going to stay
In the year of the cat

Year of the cat

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Alistair Ian Stewart / Peter John Wood

Year of the Cat lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Warner Chappell Music, Inc, Carlin America Inc