benedictus
           with a line from James Crews’s “Sacred”

when i say sacred
i mean kapiti’s parakeet eyes
meeting my eyes
as his small flight-light body
stands on our kitchen table
in near stillness, he in failing health,
i in awareness
of our otherwise still-sleeping
household as i whisper
to my long-time shoulder-riding buddy,
i love you, peet-peet. when i say
sacred i mean his moving
soundlessly closer, one step
followed by the next
in time-out-of-time,
and then his pecking
companionably
at my outstretched
hand. i mean all the times
i pull my car
into our driveway
and, from indoors,
kapiti—ever alert to my return,
sets up voluble chitter chitter
chitter announcing
i‘m here i’m here
come see me
come see me!
i mean all that transpires wordlessly
between a tiny feather-bright
soul and my human soul
over a span of years,
and does so now
on the day kapiti dies.

—dotty seiter

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Notes about poem and art:
• “benedictus” captures a sacred experience of some 25 years ago now.
• Kapiti, A Tiny Feather-Bright Soul in our home for many years, had as his final resting place a shoebox lovingly interred beside the tiny ornamental pond in our back yard surrounded by forget-me-nots in bloom and only a few feet from where he’d perched once in a 50-foot eastern white pine after riding on my shoulder out the back door and then flying high!