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For all Eternity is at once in Him, both the empty durations before the World was made, and the full ones after. Between before and after is this last day. There's a round stain on my meditation cushion where the cat peed. It forms a perfect circle, a knot of black thread precisely at its center. A tuft of his orange fur shows at 9 o'clock, a wisp of dead grass just past noon. There is no calendar for poems, I write, only artifice. But this day will end when the vet comes with her needle. These will be your traces, body elements, the odd fruits of your dying. In Lawrence, an admirer preserved William Burroughs' turd and put it on display. Matter matters, but not in that way. Om mane padme hung.

For Tortilla, with love

--28 February 2015
 [Thank you to James McCorkle for telling me that Burroughs was himself a cat lover.]