Resisted loving your cats,
feeling it would be a betrayal of my dog,
long gone,
who so loved you.
Fancied also
(oh so fatuously)
that caring for them
(like carrying on teaching Tai Chi —
another wrongful suspect)
was diminishing your diminishing life
rather than preserving it.
Now you’re gone,
only their mute daily yearning for you,
relentless, perplexed,
to be witnessed and felt,
and all resistance is dissolved.
Remorse alone,
irremediable remorse,
for having denied you
(and them)
my love for them.
Fidelity’s a false friend.
Even an instant
may become an eternity.
Feeling alone,
immanent feeling, felt,
matters.
Few the wrongs
that can ever be righted
posthumously.
2010-05-23