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Of Cats and Cardinals

—for George Lionel (2005 – 2025)

You left us at the hour of the owl
When shameless moons are far too loud and bold
__For one so still and cold—
One shrouded in a freshly laundered towel,
One lowered oh so softly in the earth—
___Our whiskered gift,
Our lifeless, purrless pet of boundless worth.
Your grim goodbye has set our sphere adrift.

As daybreak bathes your backyard bed of rest
In beaming rays too fierce for teary eyes,
__A hymn fills sunrise skies
With swirls of notes cascading from a breast
Of plumage preened and puffed to greet the dawn—
___A scarlet blast
Of avian vim above the verdant lawn
You prowled upon before you breathed your last.

This fancy-feathered chorister of cheer,
This gem of crimson-wing perched on my pain,
__This pearl of sweet refrain,
Reminds me of a vision I hold dear:
A lion lying with a fleecy lamb.
___It sounds absurd,
Yet here, in Heaven’s glare, right where I am,
I see you cuddled up beside a bird.

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Susan Jarvis Bryant is a poet originally from the U.K., now living on the Gulf Coast of Texas.

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10 Responses

  1. Roy Eugene Peterson

    I perceive the image clearly of losing a dear pet and burying it in the backyard wrapped in a freshly laundered towel. I have such a beloved pet in my own backyard, but it was a dog that my late in life wife too soon deceased brought with her. The image of the cardinal was striking.

    Reply
  2. Mark Stellinga

    Susan, we have a Cardinal couple, a Gold Finch couple, and a feisty Blue Jay bachelor now and then visiting a good-sized tree not 50 ft. from our deck. Love it. Been going on for a very long time. The Cardinals call is the the most delightful, hands down. We, too, laid one of our 4-legged children (a Yorkie of 14 people-years), to rest in a small grove on Connie’s dad’s farm where she loved to romp and pester birds and rabbits, which, of course, she never managed to capture, only piss off. Like we do with, ‘Cindy’, we know you and Mike will occasionally pause to peruse the photos you have of your whiskered ‘bird-lover’ 🙂 – and continue to enjoy the Cardinal’s unique, heart-lifting song.

    Reply
  3. Mike Bryant

    George was a cat, a kitten lost then found one nasty night and taken to a place where people sheltered him. They tried to home him many times but George, I guess, just didn’t fit in places where he should. They tried for years until the day that Susan said that IF we get a cat then he must be a George. And so, I looked for George and found the ad that said, “We have a cat named George that needs a home.”
    Now when the lady led us to that room, filled up with cats, one cat approached us and looked up at Susan. The lady said, that one is George and so we took him home.

    Now George, he was an awkward cat, ruined by six years within four walls. They told us he must always be indoors, and that he’d never learn to play. But Susan said to me, “That seems so odd… I think we’ll take George home but leave their bad advice.”

    As awkward as George was, we kept him and we worked with him. I guess he worked with us to. He became more like a dog within a few weeks. When we walked around the neighborhood, he followed.
    I said that George was a cat, but now I’m not so sure of that.

    He was so different and will always be missed.

    Reply
  4. Brian Yapko

    Before I get to this beautiful and heartrending poem, let me offer my condolences:

    Dear Susan and Mike, I am so sorry for the loss of George Lionel. I know how dearly you loved him and there is no doubt that his best years were spent in your loving care. May his memory be a blessing to you both.

    On to the poem: this funereal poem is absolutely beautiful and heartfelt. I love everything about it. But this only opens my discussion. This poem offers a master class in poetic vision and taste. Susan, many a poet can skillfully use rhyme and alliteration the way you do – you’re superlatively good at it and I learn from you constantly. But that is not in the end what I believe separates your work from that of others. I think it is your amazingly good taste in your poetic decisions. You have an unerring instinct for knowing what works and what doesn’t. You have the gift of a being a great self-critic who knows what she likes but who has a strong eye on what will work for the objective reader as well.

    I’ll tell you something: it is hard to pull off a poem in tribute of an animal’s death and not make it sound either Hallmarky or to have it lapse into bathos. What you’ve written is a tribute poem which is actually “right-sized” – it shows how deeply you loved this gentle creature and what he meant to you. What actually makes the poem work and avoid the traps I’ve mentioned is offered by your incredible poetic eye: the cardinal. You saw the symbolism in the visitation and had the smarts to make use of it. You’ve given George Lionel’s burial an extra dimension (actually, God did this for you) by bringing in a cardinal witness who does so much here: he is, of course, a witness of import. He represents the prey that your fierce boy prowled, but he may also be an angelic presence. Not to mention the churchy connections one may make with a Cardinal! The way your eyes drifted and the way your imagination interpreted what you saw is part of what makes this poem very special indeed.

    That you bring in recollection of the lion and the lamb (with biblical origins from Isaiah) takes it to the next level. And perhaps the churchy/angelic aspect of the cardinal directed your mind in this direction. Irrespective, you work miracles because heavy profundities which could have sunk a poem from being overfreighted, are treated so subjectively, so personally and with such a light touch that we are not left weeping but rather with a mystical feeling of warmth and – oddly — hope. Especially with that final word choice of “cuddled” (rather than “buried with,” “huddled with”, “sleeping with”, et al.)

    This poem, Susan, is an expression of grief which also manages to be a master class in tone and how very, very possible it is to write a poem which could have been maudlin, sentimental or overly subjective and personal, to yet be universalized — to offer sheer beauty and sentiment – without the sentimental. I’m speechless at how perfectly your sense of taste infuses your work. Reconstructing how your excellent taste informs your poems is one of the th ings that makes my critiquing of your poems such a pleasure.

    Once again, deep condolences to you and Mike. With all of these beautiful poetic images and your heartfelt sense of spiritual peace, I feel confident that he is in a better place waiting for you both to join him again.

    Reply
  5. Margaret Brinton

    Susan, this is a magnificent eulogy. The flow is so very pleasing as you express your loss.

    Reply
  6. Warren Bonham

    My condolences. I’ve never owned a cat, but I imagine that losing a cat hurts almost as much as losing a dog (I apologize in advance for the tasteless joke). This is a very moving tribute to a long-time friend. Your transcendent imagery and alliteration really shone through with this one.

    Reply
  7. Joseph S. Salemi

    Brian has said everything about the delicacy of perception, sentiment, and verbal expression in this poem, and I second all of it. Let me comment instead about its structure.

    The stanzas are pure 17th-century, composed of two quatrains (one ABBA and one ABAB). The third and sixth lines are truncated, trimeter and dimeter respectively, and they serve as intensifiers of the emotion while at the same time controlling its flow, and avoiding the Hallmarky quality of regular and predictable rhythms.

    The first stanza is also in the “melancholic” mode of 17th-century verse, but the following two stanzas are not. There we get the irrepressible voice of Susan — the hope, the optimism, the need to smile and be happy, the sheer positivity and love that motivate everything she writes.

    The old saying that “style proclaims the writer’s self” is confirmed in this beautiful poem.

    Reply
  8. Gigi Ryan

    Oh, Susan,
    What a dear poem. I am so sorry for the loss of George Lionel.
    The image of a bird “perched on your pain,” cuts to the heart of a fellow cat lover. And yes, I too believe the cat will cuddle peacefully with the bird someday.
    Gigi

    Reply
  9. Russel Winick

    Very rarely does a poem take me to a place I’ve never been before, as this one does with both its content and form. Susan and Mike — I’m so sorry for your loss, and so happy that George Lionel brought you so much pleasure. This magnificent poem, and Brian and Joe’s highly enlightening comments above, are to me SCP at its unique best.

    Reply
  10. Margaret Coats

    Condolences to Mike and Susan on the passing of a pet purrsonality, some of whose antics many of us will remember. May your deeper mutual memories continue to glow.

    Reply

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