Paw Prints On My Heart

You came into my life one day,
So beautiful and smart,
My dear and sweet companion,
I loved you from the start.

And though I knew the time would come,
When we would have to part,
You’ll never be forgotten,
You left paw prints on my heart.

HRH did truly leave paw prints on my heart. From the time she was a kitten until her final days, she would lay, not in my lap, but lengthwise across my stomach and chest with her paws over my heart. We spent many an hour like this or with her laying under the crook of my arm, her paws on my chest and her head nuzzled to my chin. When I was sad or sick she’d come to comfort me. When a storm would hit she would run to me for comfort, but always act as if she wasn’t scared.

As most cats do, she refuse to show fear or embarrassment. I remember her once falling off the bed, actually between the headboard and mattress. I tried to catch her but couldn’t move fast enough. I worried she’d hurt herself, and I looked under the bed. When I looked up she was in the doorway to my bedroom acting as if she’d been there the whole time. Even in her final days, when I know she was scared and in pain, she refused to show it. Only when she was sedated and in such agony did she let her guard down and it broke my heart further.

The poem above and below are both anonymous. I’m not sure I’ve ever posted an anonymous poem before on my Poetry Tuesdays. So this is a first. I just felt they were so beautiful and touching. I couldn’t resist.

Beyond the Rainbow Bridge

As much as I loved the life we had and all the times we played,
I was so very tired and knew my time on earth would fade.
I saw a wondrous image then of a place that’s trouble-free
Where all of us can meet again to spend eternity.

I saw the most beautiful Rainbow, and on the other side
Were meadows rich and beautiful–lush and green and wide!
And running through the meadows as far as the eye could see
Were animals of every sort as healthy as could be!
My own tired, failing body was fresh and healed and new
And I wanted to go run with them, but I had something left to do.

I needed to reach out to you, to tell you I’m alright
That this place is truly wonderful, then a bright Glow pierced the night.
‘Twas the Glow of many Candles shining bright and strong and bold
And I knew then that it held your love in its brilliant shades of gold.

For although we may not be together in the way we used to be,
We are still connected by a cord no eye can see.
So whenever you need to find me, we’re never far apart
If you look beyond the Rainbow and listen with your heart.

The story goes that just this side of heaven is a place called Rainbow Bridge. When an animal dies that has been especially close to someone here, that pet goes to Rainbow Bridge. There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends so they can run and play together. There is plenty of food, water and sunshine, and our friends are warm and comfortable.

All the animals like HRH, who had been ill and old are restored to health and vigor. Those who were hurt or maimed are made whole and strong again, just as we remember them in our dreams of days and times gone by. The animals are happy and content, except for one small thing; they each miss someone very special to them, who had to be left behind.

They all run and play together, but the day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into the distance. Her bright eyes will be intent. Her eager body will quivers. Suddenly she will happily run from the group (she never liked other animals anyway), she will fly over the green grass, her legs carrying her faster and faster.

You have been spotted, and when you and your special friend finally meet, you cling together in joyous reunion, never to be parted again. The happy kisses rain upon your face; your hands again caress the beloved head, and you look once more into the trusting eyes of your pet, so long gone from your life but never absent from your heart.

Then you cross Rainbow Bridge together…. I know I will see my beloved Victoria and Calico again someday. I’m sure there will be other special animals in my life as well. Most likely said animals will be cats. Calico was my first real pet, but she was as much a family pet as mine. Victoria, however, was a vat I picked out and took her home. She was loyal to me and I to her above all others.

I promise this will be my last post about HRH. I know it is sad, and I am dealing with the grief which is hitting me hard. I don’t want this blog to be a downer, so I will move on to happier topics. Thanks again for all of your love and support.

Shame: A Poem
By Maggie Yaddof

Yes there was a time
A time before the pain
And yes it was a good time
That time before the pain

Yes it was simple
Yes it was full of peace
Yes it was worriless
Yes we lived with ease

Well, that time isn’t coming back
We will never be the same
Relax though —— it’s okay
Let go of your shame

This is not your fault
You are not to blame
This cannot be prevented
So let go of your shame

Just try it I dare you
Live in the now
Not tomorrow, not yesterday
Come on, you know how

Don’t dwell on the past
And what life could have been
Quit mourning for that loss
Don’t let the “what-ifs” win

Stop fretting about tomorrow
And what it will be like
You’re making your own misery
So step into the light.

Look at where you are
See the brightened sky
Look-over, look around
We are all on your side.

We know that you are strong
We see your beauty, see your smile
And we will battle next to you
Mile, by mile, by mile.

You are a silent warrior
You will never be the same
As a person you are now better
So let go of your shame.

I had a very bad scare yesterday. I woke up and couldn’t find HRH. I had to leave for work, so I hoped and prayed all day that she was just being lazy and had overslept that morning. Sometimes she doesn’t get up, but just looks at me and goes back to sleep. I hoped she was just somewhere I couldn’t see. I worried all day, and by 2pm I had a massive headache. I left school an hour early and headed home to find HRH.

I searched the house to no avail. She’s been known to sneak out the door sometimes if it’s left open too long, and I feared that she might have been out since the night before or even that morning. HRH is an indoor cat and in the years she lived with my parents while I was in graduate school they’d had her declawed. Her voice and her bite are her only defense these days. Her voice is by far her best defense. She can let loose a blood curdling yeow that have caused dogs to run in fear. In fact last time she was out, two dogs cornered her. When she was finished with them, they’ve never stepped foot in our yard again. Still I feared for her safety if she’d been out.

I was right to be afraid. When I checked outside, I found her hidden next to the front porch. She was tired and dehydrated. Alabama this time of year is no place to survive the heat outside. I took her in to get water. That’s when I noticed that she couldn’t stand on her back legs. As soon I she stopped drinking water, I rushed her to the vet, fearing a trauma I could not see. There were no signs of anything having hurt her other than she couldn’t stand on her back legs.

I finally was able to see the vet and they sedated her and did some x-rays. My sweet HRH has arthritis in her lower back. Osteoarthritis, also called degenerative arthritis or degenerative joint disease, is the most common form of arthritis in cats. Still, it is less common in cats than it is in dogs and usually produces milder symptoms. However, it is most often seen in Abyssinians, Himalayans, Siamese, and Persians. HRH’s father was a Himalayan and her mother a gray tabby. Usually with mixed breeds, the genes for pedigree cats are suppressed, but HRH has always shown the signs of a Siamese (Himalayans are a Siamese-Persian mix). In a cat with degenerative joint disease, the cartilage covering the articulating surface of a joint wears out and the underlying bone develops a roughened surface that damages the joint. Most of HRH’s damage appears to be in her spine which caused her problems with her home legs.

The vet gave her a steroid shot and some fluids. I will have to give her steroids twice a day for five days and then once a day for another five days. If there is not improvement, I will have to take she back on Friday, otherwise she will go back to the vet in ten days. Please pray with me that she improves. Next week, HRH will turn 16. She’s been my loyal and loving companion since she was a kitten. I love her dearly and I don’t know what I’d do without her. I know there is no cure and a day will come when the arthritis overtakes her, but for now, the vet seems to believe the steroids will give her strength.

The poem “Shame” by Maggie Yaddof was written by a young girl who suffers from juvenile arthritis. It was originally published in Arthritis Today.

A Gift
By Amy Lowell

See! I give myself to you, Beloved!
My words are little jars
For you to take and put upon a shelf.
Their shapes are quaint and beautiful,
And they have many pleasant colours and lusters
To recommend them.
Also the scent from them fills the room
With sweetness of flowers and crushed grasses.

When I shall have given you the last one,
You will have the whole of me,
But I shall be dead.

About This Poem
“A Gift” was originally published in Lowell’s second collection of poems, Sword Blades and Poppy Seeds (The Macmillan Company, 1914).

About This Poet
Amy Lowell was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, in 1874. Among her honors is the Pulitzer Prize in poetry. Lowell died in Brookline in May of 1925.

Love Returned
Bayard Taylor

He was a boy when first we met;
His eyes were mixed of dew and fire,
And on his candid brow was set
The sweetness of a chaste desire:
But in his veins the pulses beat
Of passion, waiting for its wing,
As ardent veins of summer heat
Throb through the innocence of spring.

As manhood came, his stature grew,
And fiercer burned his restless eyes,
Until I trembled, as he drew
From wedded hearts their young disguise.
Like wind-fed flame his ardor rose,
And brought, like flame, a stormy rain:
In tumult, sweeter than repose,
He tossed the souls of joy and pain.

So many years of absence change!
I knew him not when he returned:
His step was slow, his brow was strange,
His quiet eye no longer burned.
When at my heart I heard his knock,
No voice within his right confessed:
I could not venture to unlock
Its chambers to an alien guest.

Then, at the threshold, spent and worn
With fruitless travel, down he lay:
And I beheld the gleams of morn
On his reviving beauty play.
I knelt, and kissed his holy lips,
I washed his feet with pious care;
And from my life the long eclipse
Drew off; and left his sunshine there.

He burns no more with youthful fire;
He melts no more in foolish tears;
Serene and sweet, his eyes inspire
The steady faith of balanced years.
His folded wings no longer thrill,
But in some peaceful flight of prayer:
He nestles in my heart so still,
I scarcely feel his presence there.

O Love, that stern probation o’er,
Thy calmer blessing is secure!
Thy beauteous feet shall stray no more,
Thy peace and patience shall endure!
The lightest wind deflowers the rose,
The rainbow with the sun departs,
But thou art centred in repose,
And rooted in my heart of hearts!

American Boys, Hello!
Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Oh! we love all the French, and we speak in French
As along through France we go.
But the moments to us that are keen and sweet
Are the ones when our khaki boys we meet,
Stalwart and handsome and trim and neat;
And we call to them—“Boys, hello!”
“Hello, American boys,
Luck to you, and life’s best joys!
American boys, hello!”

We couldn’t do that if we were at home—
It never would do, you know!
For there you must wait till you’re told who’s who,
And to meet in the way that nice folks do.
Though you knew his name, and your name he knew—
You never would say “Hello, hello, American boy!”
But here it’s just a joy,
As we pass along in the stranger throng,
To call out, “Boys, hello!”

For each is a brother away from home;
And this we are sure is so,
There’s a lonesome spot in his heart somewhere,
And we want him to feel there are friends
right there

In this foreign land, and so we dare
To call out “Boys, hello!”
“Hello, American boys,
Luck to you, and life’s best joys!
American boys, hello!”

About This Poem

Ella Wheeler Wilcox wrote “American Boys, Hello!” while visiting France during the latter stages of World War I as entertainment for the American soldiers stationed there.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox was born in Johnstown, Wisconsin, in 1850. She wrote numerous collections of poetry, including Poems of Reflection (1905). She died in Connecticut in 1919.

XXXIX (from Last Poems)
By AE Housman

When summer’s end is nighing
  And skies at evening cloud,
I muse on change and fortune
  And all the feats I vowed
  When I was young and proud.

The weathercock at sunset
  Would lose the slanted ray,
And I would climb the beacon
  That looked to Wales away
  And saw the last of day.

From hill and cloud and heaven
  The hues of evening died;
Night welled through lane and hollow
  And hushed the countryside,
  But I had youth and pride.

And I with earth and nightfall
  In converse high would stand,
Late, till the west was ashen
  And darkness hard at hand,
  And the eye lost the land.

The year might age, and cloudy
  The lessening day might close,
But air of other summers
  Breathed from beyond the snows,
  And I had hope of those.

They came and were and are not
  And come no more anew;
And all the years and seasons
  That ever can ensue
  Must now be worse and few.

So here’s an end of roaming
  On eves when autumn nighs:
The ear too fondly listens
  For summer’s parting sighs,
  And then the heart replies.

I chose this week’s poem because this is the last week of my summer before school starts back. The poem beginning “When summer’s end is nighing” is numbered but untitled, like all the others in the 1922 collection, Last Poems, Housman compiled and published this collection specifically so it could be read by Moses Jackson, one of Houseman’s college roommates and the object of his life-long, probably unrequited love, who, by this time, lay terminally ill in Canada. Jackson was heterosexual and did not reciprocate Housman’s feelings. Housman obtained a first in classical Moderations in 1879, but his dedication to textual analysis, particularly with Propertius, led him to neglect ancient history and philosophy, which formed part of the Greats curriculum. Accordingly, he failed to obtain a degree. Some scholars attribute Housman’s unexpected failure in his final exams directly to his rejection by Jackson. Most biographers suggest that there are more obvious reasons. Housman was indifferent to philosophy, overconfident in his preternatural gifts, felt contempt for inexact learning, and enjoyed idling away his time with Jackson. He may also have been distracted by news of his father’s desperate illness. The failure left him with a deep sense of humiliation, and a determination to vindicate his genius.

Housman is a poet who often seems to be on the verge of saying the conventional poetic thing, and then, in a flash, turns it in a new direction. It may simply be the matter of an unexpected phrase or even a single word. A less original poet would have chosen “nearing” rather than “nighing” for the first-line end-verb. This is not a choice decided by the need for a rhyme, because the “a” line in the poem never rhymes. “Nighing” is a curious archaism: it’s not even a particularly melodious word, but perhaps the fact that it rhymes with another present participle that the poem resists, “sighing”, underlies its haunting effect. Finally, the verb reappears in a different tense. This time, “nighs” meets with its natural word-mate, “sighs”. It’s one small example of an enormous technical skill in the shaping and integration of individual units and whole poem. But this skill is un-showy. It serves something that, for Housman, was all-important to a poem: its emotion.

While concerned with the melancholy closure of ageing, the poem conveys in parenthesis the limitlessness of adolescent aspiration. The narrative slows luxuriantly in stanza five, and pauses on the easy confidence of “the air of other summers”. But then, all at once, it accelerates. Those awaited summers have arrived, and evaporated, remaining somehow unlived: “They came, and went, and are not …” At this point it’s absolutely clear that Housman is not writing in the comfortable afterglow of nostalgia. He is writing about a dark absence of fulfilment, now irredeemably faced in the light of “the only end of age” – to quote a poet who learned much from him, and seems to have been temperamentally similar, Philip Larkin.

Housman was a great classical scholar, and his intimacy with Latin, in particular, dictates the shape of his poetry. He makes our cumbersome language seem graceful, flexible and swift. His enduring popular reputation over the years is partly because of his ability to express emotions of a certain universally appealing kind (The Shropshire Lad has been in print continuously since 1896) but also testifies to a remarkable style, both epigrammatic and musical, which produces lyric poems that are simple to remember – and simply memorable.

When We Two Parted
By George Gordon Byron

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow–
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me–
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well–
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met–
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?–
With silence and tears.

In a letter to a friend in 1809, Byron wrote (probably facetiously) that he was going to Turkey to do research for a treatise “Sodomy simplified or Paederasty proved to be praiseworthy from ancient authors and modern practice”. Like all jokes, this must have had an edge of truth to be funny.

At Cambridge, Byron had fallen deeply in love with a choirboy, John Edelston. Byron wrote several poems that scholars believe were written to and about John, calling him “Thyrza”. One of the Thyrza poems, written after John had died, indicates in the words: “The pressure of the thrilling hand, the kiss, so guiltless and refined, that Love each warmer wish forbore”, that their physical contact had been restricted to hand-holding and kissing. He later referred to it as a passion “violent though pure”. Even much later in life, after the “Thyrza” poems had become very famous and popular, Byron refused to say who they were addressed to and changed the pronouns from masculine to feminine to conceal that this doomed but lifelong passion was for a man.

After two years of being Byron’s “almost constant associate since October 1805”, John had to move away from Cambridge to London and Byron wrote to a woman friend, Elizabeth Pigot, about his heartbreak, saying that he was planning to live with his “protégé” after he had completed his studies, which would “put Lady E. Butler & Miss Ponsonby to the Blush, Pylades & Orestes out of countenance, & want nothing but a Catastrophe like Nisus and Euryalus, to give Johnathon & David the ‘go by’ “. These are all same-sex passionate relationships.

However, some time later John wrote a very courteous and formal letter to Byron asking for his help in getting a job. They had never met again.

While Byron was on his travels in Turkey, Albania, and Greece he wrote to Matthews frequently about his sexual conquests of boys using a coded term based on Latin “plen. et optabil. –Coit.” (Frequent and desired intercourse). He reported that he was amusing himself with “a Sopha to tumble upon” with a Greek boy called Eustathius who had “ambrosial curls hanging down his amiable back”.

It has been argued (with very little evidence)that while in the East, Byron was a lover of Ali Pasha or his son, Veli Pasha, rulers of Albania and the Peloponessus. They were very friendly and hospitable to Byron and Veli Pasha did give him a beautiful white horse.

Byron’s relationships with friends of both sexes seem to have been shadowed by jealousy and possessiveness. John Cam Hobhouse considered himself to be Byron’s “best friend” and in many ways was, travelling with him, assisting him legally and financially and finally burying him. There is no trace of sexuality between them.

Byron and Shelley became very close friends in the summer of 1816 in Switzerland. They sailed around Lake Leman together visiting the locations of a romantic novel written by Rousseau called “La Nouvelle Heloise”. One afternoon they exchanged roses. This was rhapsodically memorialized by Shelley in his journal where he referred to Byron, anonymously, as “my companion”.

While he was visiting Byron in Venice several years later, Shelley was shocked by Byron’s ostentatiously erotic lifestyle and remarked in a letter to a friend in England that some of his street pick-ups had “lost the gait and physiognomy of men”. This has been interpreted to mean they were cross-dressers. Shelley was also outraged that Byron bargained with parents for the services of their daughters.

The last poems Byron wrote were found among his papers after his sudden death. They indicated that he had fallen painfully and guiltily in love with a fifteen year old Greek boy named Loukas Chalandritsanos. Byron gave him money, fancy uniforms and the command of a regiment. As far as is known there was no physical contact between them.

Byron is known to have had sex with at least 300 women.

So the verdict is bisexual, although such distinctions were not explicit at the time. I think “hyper-sexual” covers it.

I’m heading back to Alabama and I guess back in the closet for a while. It’s been a good vacation, but it’s time to go back and face reality.

“We Two Boys Together Clinging”
By Walt Whitman

WE two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm’d and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.

Walt Whitman’s poem “We Two Boys Together Clinging” is often identified as a poem of homosexual love, a label breeched from its title and the history of its author. Other scholars insist the poem represents a unique concept of the brotherhood of two young men, forged by the experiences of war. In either interpretation, the poem paints a portrait of masculinity through its setting of soldiering during the Civil War (1861–1865). Whitman’s poetry, including “We Two Boys Together Clinging”, was written before the “unspoken love” of homosexuality had a name to be spoken of. The context of the poem recalls the camaraderie of men through the challenges and ruggedness of this American war. Enveloping the romance of soldiering, the lines of the poem easily echo the ancient wars of the Romans as much as modern and contemporary wars through which notions of pride, glory, and masculinity are still associated. Whitman’s portrayal of this intense companionship developed from “excursions making” and “sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening …” often leaves the reader with notions of survival, learned (or inherited) skill, manipulating the enemy, strength of body and intelligence, and the pursuit of adventure—all aspects society traditionally perceive as masculine.

In “We Two Boys Together Clinging,” a duo of young boys goes parading through various towns of the North and the South, taking part in numerous loud and obnoxious activities such as drinking, thieving, and enjoying public power; all the time, the boys never left each other’s side. According to Charles M. Oliver in his Critical Companion to Walt Whitman, with the last line, the speaker reveals that the two boys are homosexual and that they have been marauding places for food and to see the shocked faces of the people when they recognize their homosexuality.

Normally, Whitman would write about the “self” or the “everyman,” but it’s unlikely that either of these are strongly involved in “We Two Boys Together Clinging.” The story itself is not really self-enhancing because the speaker does not refer to anything that sets up a sense of fulfillment. The boys merely travel from location to location, scrounging for food and laughs, but they do not lead full lives. In fact, their lives are hallow and lacking, and they should be, at least, trying to build a solid relationship with each other to base their adventures less on necessity and more on friendship. The “everyman,” however, is slightly prevalent in the people the boys visit, like the priests, because religion was a large basis for the lives of the common citizen.