(January 14, 2014 at 12:47 pm)Minimalist Wrote: Every year the dog rescue runs a membership gathering at which there is a ceremony honoring the dogs who have passed away in the prior year. Someone (not me!) always reads this stupid poem.People are always sending it to me as an email. It is, as you say, a rather childish view, but it doesn't get under my skin. I can understand that they were not ready to say good-bye to a beloved dog.
For a more realistic farewell, here are the last stanzas of a poem I wrote for a much-loved Irish Setter in 1999. She was lying on the grass beside me while I was digging her grave a few days before the euthanasia appointment. Our land has so many rocks you never no how long it will take to dig a hole.
Quote:digging a setter-sized hole
I'm not sure about my reason for
digging a setter-sized hole.
I am not some neolithic hunter,
and I don't believe at all
your worn-out body will get rebuilt
like a Canadian Tire alternator
replacing
those hind legs that betrayed you last month,
those bleary, oozing eyes,
those pressure points bereft of fur,
that broken canine.
I am not some medieval farmer,
and neither do I expect that
I will stroke your ethereal fur beyond the stars.
I am a rational 20th century man
in the last year of that century,
and I suppose that
after I lower you into that setter-sized hole,
I will never see you again,
and I will grow older,
perhaps another 20 years,
until they lower me into a man-sized hole.
And yet I wanted
to dig you a setter-sized hole.
I guess, old girl, I'm afraid
if we get too rational to acknowledge love like yours,
it might disappear from the world.
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people — House
