Once you’ve truly loved and lost an animal friend, you know better
The Second Step on Buddha’s Noble eight-Fold Path is: “Right Understanding”)
Our dog Rusty lies in a small ball, curled-up on one of his two beds, listening through aging ears for any sound of danger; He licks his lips by habit and instinct.
He has no language for grasping how beloved he is to us. And we hardly have words to express our depth of love for him.
But his right understanding of that truth has no need for words nor for the approval of imaginary deities.
Patti Sobs…
...every time Rusty,
dying,
yelps in pain,
which is happening far
too often for
us to ignore.
Tomorrow morning
we’ll call the vet
back again and have him
put an end to this suffering.
You see,
we are god to Rusty
and it’s a horrible job.
Earlier I took him
out so he could pee,
which he managed
but not without
a high level of hurting.
And as I stood
watching and waiting for him
to finish
a cold gust of
March wind
hit me in the face.
I dropped
my chin and tried
to be strong.
Rusty managed to
struggle his way
back into the house with me.
I’d promised, recently, to try
to write more cheerful poems
but this god gig is a tough motherfucker
and as you can see
cheerful poems ain’t gonna happen today.
