One Enchanted Evening

My mate calls from the St. Louis airport.
He has just been offered a job!* I nearly levitate with happiness.

Then UPS arrives with a new internet router.

I could not be more deeply calm and happy.

I make chicken and dumplings.

Outside a powerful rain falls in the darkness, a nice purple dark rain, heavy but straight down and drenching but not damaging to the plants.

I open the kitchen door a little and Beezle the wild kitten saunters in.

This is a dear moment. This is like having a baby bobcat come in from the wild.
I put a little milk on the porch for him. He laps it up, and then runs back inside, and curls round and round my legs, looking up at me, occasionally meowing.

Beezle the winter kitten and I have a history. This is a very feral animal, born in late Autumn, who has given me much trouble and whom I named after Beezlebub.

But this night it is a scared young thing and it winds round and round my legs.
It leaps up to knee height and tries to high-five me with its polydactyl lobster paw hands.

But one must be careful with this little bobcat. It does not know human manners.
I try to pet it a bit and it doesn’t know how to respond so it comes at me with its swiping paws. Its eyes are very like wild fire. It wants to love and be loved and it wants to be adopted and come in from the cold and wet. But it has its winter skills, surviving on its own through blizzards and hardships.

I feed it little bits of chicken.

I cook dinner while it steps on my feet.

When the dog comes up, he wags his tail at the kitten in a friendly fashion, and the Beezle runs out into the night through the open door.

All this time I have believed Beezle was a boy, but with this closer look, now it is not so clear.

*

Later in my enchanted evening,
I find myself

Sitting in a rocking chair,
Looking out at a rainy night.

I finally feel at home.
Just in time for us to be leaving.

Or is it partly because we may be leaving?

(4-8-11)

(* a verbal offer, from recruiter not company so he will have to wait until next week to hear more officially, and completely believe it, but i can still jump for joy now)