Black Panther and Me

My relationship with the Black Panther is, at the moment, strained. Though I feel like it is very slowly improving. The work I have done this last quarter has helped me tremendously though I feel like she and I have a long ways to go. She is patient and even somewhat indifferent to my process (she is after all, a cat). So it is up to me to open to her, to investigate, to be curious and explore what it is that she is bringing to my life (and in fact, has already started in my life some years back). I know this is all sounding very mysterious....I will explain.

Last year my supervisor/co-worker J. lost his partner M. of 22 years. It was a freak accident. M. had been working at our facility part time. On his way to work, crossing the street, he was hit by a truck. He was in intensive care for a month before he passed. The facility that I work at is small and the staff is all very close in a strange sometimes dysfunctional sort of way, very much like a family. It hit us all very hard when the accident happened. Mostly I was very concerned for J. I know what it is like to lose a partner. I lost the love of my life 15 years ago to a terminal illness. I still miss him. It changed my life forever and dramatically....some of it good, some of it not so good.

When M. passed I knew what kind of grief J. had in front of him. It brought me back to my own excruciating process of trying to heal from such a devastating blow.

One night coming home from work, I was thinking/feeling very deeply on J.'s situation and feeling very, very, bad for him and also knowing that there was a limit as to how much I could actually help him. This would be a road that only he could travel and much of it would be alone.

As I was thinking all of this a poem came out of me and I furiously wrote it down on bits of paper as I sat on the BART train.

The name of the poem is "Hunted". I will write it in my next post.