The thinking is different than the writing, and nothing I 
ever think, consciously, ever makes it to paper without some 
revision…my poems come from ‘there’, my ruminations over dreams
 and day to day thoughts come from ‘here’…so this is my struggle….
when I think it, I wish we could record mind thoughts, along with 
the subsequent tears and emotions that go, but they only end up 
being written, so I don’t forget. But writing this, unlike poems, 
is like trying to record a sky or a moon on a certain night, vir
tually impossible. I think, I write, and the writing comes nowhere 
near 
the thought….why I never bothered to keep a journal, but oh well, 
here I go anyhow.

Puppies…warm puppy bodies flowing through my hands….
A stressful dream of having to feed and keep track of letting 
them out to do their business….lotsa puppies, dogs (a big smiling 
yellow labrador), and cats to take care of….but I ran out of time….
warm puppy bodies running through my hands out the door, mischievous 
dachshund, warm other puppy bodies…some disfigured, but charmingly 
loyal cat following me around everywhere, my soul kitty, faithful 
as anything, although I forgot to feed it and found my mother at the 
end of the day reminding me I’d forgotten the she-kitty, a half-eaten 
spoonful of baby food sitting on the floor next to my soul-
worshipping 
deformed kitty, able to walk in front normal, but with weird spindly 
back legs, hopping around like some kind of toad. Scrawny and scraggly, 
but devoted and not deformed in my dream, just a singular soulful 
soulmate. A mind kind of devoted….telling me things without words. 
Deformed, in Earth terms, yes, but in my dreams just a devoted soul, normal.

Like the Red giant Amazon parrot who greeted me, my first awakening to 
my soul animals (besides my horse dreams, before I was aware of Home) who are waiting there still at Home. He was standing on the concrete pavement, 
and although I heard no words, he was standing there saying ‘Hi, how ya 
been…where have you been, hello, I’m here! Did you forget me?’ I woke up 
that day confused, but realized he was part of my Home ‘posse’! A Red 
parrot, reminding me of Home…where there are no distinctions between 
animals and humans…we can speak, telepathic…we relate, we comfort, we 
Are….no words can describe this….therefore no matter how described, it 
pales. He was there, I recognized him, in my weird Earthly way trying to 
figure out how this bird could be speaking to me, then, bam, it just 
clicked.

Back to Earth:
gibralter trade center….a little soul I  haven’t been able to stop 
thinking about…this gorgeous african grey parrot….in the bird center, 
part of the ‘pet fair’ part of the center…what a gallant guy, he stuck 
his little royal head out of his cage…I was afraid to pet him, for fear 
he was out for blood, but in meeting him, stroking his grey, glorious 
head, 
he just craved the attention…it’s like he was yelling out, like my Red,
 ‘hey,
 how ya been? Look at me, I love you!’…no fancy gestures, just a soul-
bonding.
I got the delusional idea weeks later that I –must- go back and buy him….
to this day I still wonder, is he there, my little grey friend? The 
earthly part of me says I’m a delusional fool…the Home part of me 
wants to go back, see if he’s there, and take him home….i thought of 
him alone, at night, among his birdie occupants in the other ‘cells’ 
and thought of the great loneliness, that a bird with that much character 
must crave love….or maybe I thought of me…but can’t a birdie experience it 
too? That lonely night?
Loneliness and loss, animals have it, of that there is no doubt….no one can tell me they don’t experience it.
My last lovely boy ‘keet, being sick, thought he could pull through, 
came home after work and there was the poor, dead shell of his body 
on the floor of the cage. I still cry now, as I did then, tears that 
dropped me to the floor. Poor Baby…witnessing that, sitting there 
with a dead shell on the floor of your cage, whether for one hour 
or 8 hours, it makes no difference…I put him in a holiday box in the 
fridge, no other box fitting, no other place other than the place of 
food that sometimes fulfills me….later, drunk, I opened the box and 
laid my cheek against his breast and his lifeless, hours ago still 
awake and chirping, beak and head…yes, I did this…I have no shame…
wanting to feel what death is….I did this numerous times in this week, 
til I could bring him to my mother’s garden to bury.
So many months, almost two years later, I saw the movie ‘The Hours’….
and I stopped myself, since I was in a public movie house, from crying 
when I saw Nicole Kidman’s character (the esteemed Ms. Woolfe) lie herself 
down next to the dead bird, look it in the face and feel so, so much. I 
did that, I felt that. How many times can one cry over this one scene. 
Many, trust me. I still do…and probably will, forever.
A bird is a delicate creature, and so must we be. They feel it as we do. 
So much. That one scene is what will make me buy that movie, and watch it 
over again. Birds are so delicate, wild or tame, like a Victorian lady 
fainting in an emotional moment….birds have taught me about delicacy….
and probably about the annoyances of having children….my birds chatter 
and fight every day, and they drive me crazy….but without them,  I have 
no life in my house. A house is not a home, in my thoughts, unless 
there’s 
some animal there to grace you….a fish, a cat, a dog, even a spider….
plants don’t suffice…lately, after my dream, I want puppy breath to grace my face, a few licks of adorant affection, puppy breath, kitten lunacy, paws kneading….i miss my soul animals of this Earth, and I miss my buddies back Home.
What am I here for? I see heaven and tragedies in my dreams.I feel alive, born again, and lost in a single day. Like I said in my poem, to feel, feel so much. What is life, in that we feel? What more can there be?
I feel a poem coming in, a new day’s done, sadness lives on.
I hear the words ‘I’m gonna wake up, fucked up! Tomorrow…’
So what…
I wish Sylvia Plath hadn’t gassed herself
I wish Kurt hadn’t used the gun.
I wish we could be all as one
I wish John wouldn’t have found New York
So be it, so it’s done. In John’s words
‘We All Shine On’

-Kim Hunt, 5-23-03