Jo Chern

Category: Age

  • To My Hospice Cat

            All hip bones and sagging skin Hollow eyes, naked ears. Still chasing leaves As if running down prey; But time to go, time to go Listen to the Buddha: Everything changes.

  • Kuan Yin: Beyond Human

    He’s lying in the sun, breath heavy and fast, sides shrunken, bones of the chest and neck showing through the skin, backs of the ears and the toes almost hairless now. Just an old cat suffering from age and pain and a host of ailments. “Just put him down,” people tell me especially after they…

  • Re-Versing Time

    We did a lot of “Om”-ing back in the ’70s. Meditation was practically a competitive sport. We’d sit Lotus position, eyes only half closed so we could sneak looks at those around us. “How does she get her foot that high on her damn thigh?” “Oh, c’mon, look at the math geek–half lotus, how sad.”…

  • Age and Ache

      When I was young, if I was young, I believed the lies about how age creeps up on you, setting in like a fog, oozing into your pores a bit at a time. I also believed Sandburg when he said that the fog comes in quietly “on little cat’s feet.” Well, neither the fog…