Flying Home

It is November,
and a Nor’easter is blowing through.
Eliot is missing.
The bedroom screen, discovered too late this morning, was left open all night.

She is a fiercely shy creature.
Got out once before.
A dozen years ago.
And returned with child.
And so it is Uncle Max, her only daughter who pines through the night
on the safe and secured side of her portal.

In the calm before this storm,
early this morning,
I stood on the front porch and watched through the mist on the creek
as a family of ducks paused to wait for the stragglers to catch up.
The pin oak leaves beginning to catch the headwinds of the coming weather.
This passage of the Little Conewago Creek
which marks the length of our Pennsylvania acre
is a constant source of wondrous glimpses of nature
and her mysteries.

Dark now with an awful chilly rain.
I went out an hour ago to open the cellar door
and leave a light on over the basement workbench.

Through the howling winds
and the crackle of leaves against the window pane
I can hear a soft purring.
My little spit of a barn cat is returned
hunched under the dining room table
and all is right with the world.