Ostara and the Ovid Moon of the Metamorphoses

Monday gratefuls: Heart to heart with Kate. Sweet and sad. Rigel, her head on my pillow most of the night. Vaccines. Salivary glands. 45 Mar-a-logged out. 46 looking more FDR’y everyday. Grief in Boulder. Stimulus checks mailing on April 2nd.

Sparks of Joy: Truth spoken from deep within.

Rigel

Rigel. Dogged. After her multi-thousand dollar hospitalization last August for endocarditis, she developed a gimpy left back leg. She fell sometimes, tried to climb the stairs to the loft and got stuck. Once she made it up to my balcony on the second story over the garage, got part way down and tumbled the rest of the way. She is not a cat.

So. I have created a dog barrier at the bottom of my stairs. Two outdoor chairs placed together which I move going up and down. Sure, a gate would be better and I think Jon may have finished one. But. Covid. Someday soon perhaps.

This morning. I’m sitting here finishing my spark of joy. Woof. Woof. Woof. A deep bark came from out my chamber door. Quoth the Canine, here I am!

Yes, Rigel had moved a chair and climbed the stairs to come visit. Sweet, you might say. Really it was a treat run for her. I gave her one, went down the stairs with her, she navigated them with ease, and I altered my chairs to better guard the stairs.

She beat the endocarditis, prances and jumps, hunts for the critters that live under our deck and shed, and has made it into her thirteenth year. Worth every penny.

I’ve called the dogs family members for a long time, as do many. Only lately I’ve realized it’s not a paternal relationship; it’s a fraternal and sororal one. Kep is my brother. Rigel is my sister. We live in mutuality, Kate and me, Rigel and Kep with both of us. We take care of each other. Through good times and bad.

Same thing, said another way by Rilke:

Mother Earth, isn’t this what you want

To arise in us invisible?

Is it not your dream, to enter us so wholly

there’s nothing left outside us to see?

What, if not transformation,

is your deepest purpose? Earth, my love,

I want that too. Believe me,

no more of your springtimes are needed

to win me over — even one flower

is more than enough. Before I was named

I belonged to you. I seek no other law

but yours, and know I can trust

The death you will bring.

~Rainer Maria Rilke~