Mutual Healing With Max

Hi friends,
Love of animals is a later life gift for me. It’s amazing how we can be compassionate healers for one another when we can. Animals seem to know what’s best for them, and often for “their humans.” The holiday season seems to heighten our awareness of human failings, especially in this year of Covid, but the soothing abilities of animals is a lesson for us all. Here’s a 2018 poem about Cat Max, who has since passed after his bout with cancer, and his uncanny healing sympathies during my own recovery. Be sure to visit my Facebook page, A Long Road Home, and my Instagram: eugenecbianchi. Thanks, Gene.

“Mutual Healing with Max”

We’ve been bedmates for eighteen years,
Siamese Max and I, from his earliest days
in a distant Georgia trailer
where he said: “Adopt me, you’ll be glad.”

Little did I realize his poetic soul,
baritone voice and playful tricks.
Now we both stand against cancer,
mine seems tamed, his a present struggle.

During my recovery, he knew
I needed the medicine of touch,
so he lay on my chest giving injections
of deep sound and kneading paws.

During a long academic career,
I didn’t learn the art of body listening.
Now I try to interpret his statements,
gait and the look in his eyes.

Is he sick or just pulling my leg
to obtain a morsel of almond butter?
Now he lets me apply cannabis salve
without worry about addiction or the law.

Scientific medicine offers marvels,
but it disparages what can’t be measured.
Each morning it’s a blessing to feel the gift
of his purr and our breath as we wake.