The Cat

THE CAT
Poem — Ryan Alexander

In April 2004, twenty-eight-year-old Ryan Alexander deployed to Iraq with the U.S. Army's Stryker Brigade Combat Team. (Alexander had served in the U.S. Marine Corps but was honorably discharged in 2001. When Operation Iraqi Freedom began, he volunteered to work with the SBCT as a civilian. The specifics of his job cannot be disclosed.) Alexander wrote the following poem about a cat he encountered soon after he arrived in Mosul.


She came to me skittish, wild.
The way you're meant to be,
surrounded by cruelty.
I did not blame her.
I would do the same.

A pregnant cat, a happy distraction;
some sort of normal thing.
Calico and innocent.

The kittens in her belly said feed me.

And I did.

She crept with careful eye,
Body held low to the dirt,
Snagged a bite,
And carried it just far enough away.

She liked the MREs,
the beef stew, the chicken breast, the barbeque pork,
but she did not like canned sardines.
I do not blame her.
I would do the same.

She came around again and again
finally deciding that I was no threat,
that this big man wasn't so bad.

I was afraid to touch her as the docs warned us.
Iraqi animals were carriers of flesh-eating disease.
I donned a plastic glove and was the first to pet
this wild creature who may be

the one true heart and mind that America
had won over.

After a while I forgot the glove and enjoyed
the tactile softness of short fur,
flesh-eating bacteria be damned.

Her belly swelled for weeks
and she disappeared for some days
until her kittens were safely birthed

in the shallow of a rusted desk
in the ruins that lined the road behind us.

She came around again slim
with afterbirth still matted to her hind legs.

She would return, but not quite as often.
She came to eat and for attention,
but there was nursing to be done.

One day she crept up with a kitten in her mouth.
She dropped it at my foot and stared up at me;
she expected something, but there was nothing I could do.
The young black and white kitten was dead,
its eyes not yet opened.

It looked like some shriveled old wise thing,
completely still, mouth puckered,
small body curled and limp.

She let me take the baby without a fight.
She knew, but seemed unaffected.

She had fetched me a gift,
a lesson,
among the worried nights,
shot nerves from poorly aimed mortar rounds:

Everything dies.
The evil, the innocent,
her baby and
me.

I thought I should say a prayer and bury
this poor little thing,
but I did for it what will be done for me.
I laid it in the burn can amongst the ash
and said I'm sorry.


From NPR 'Operation Homecoming'

Narrow Door

Everyone's driving, driving down the wide road, down the wide road
So fast, so blindly drunk on the flumes, they don't even see
Changing lanes and running their cars into the ground
counting mile markers on the road to know how far You've gone wrong

Take the narrow road, take the hard way

Money

Chasing the possibilities

We spend our life in circles
Running around and around again
chasing the possibilities
We run and run again

We chase a promise
a picture of silver and gold
richly lined pockets
things to have and hold

we huff and puff
running till we run low
slaves to our possessions
sacrificed to dough

when we pout and preach our morals
the truth is easily seen
when you stab us in the heart
we only bleed green

We are servants of money
chasers of dimes
lovers of possessions
burning our time

We we run and run again
until our dying day
chasing the possibilities
Until to dust we fade away

Acceptance

Acceptance is the answer to all my problems today.
When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation-
Some fact of my life-unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment,
Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by mistake.
Unless I accept life completely on life's terms, I cannot be happy.
I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and in my attitudes.

-Source Unknown