In Memoria Canis

  Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
   Of giving your heart to a dog to tear
 (Rudyard Kipling The Power of The Dog)

  The spade stands ready beside the shed
   a cold February and now he is dead.
   He may have been ill and forgotten
  what a dog should do but he was ours
   and always gave of his very best so
   we minded him and helped him along
to his long days rest and when all is said
  the spade was ready beside the shed.

As I’m writing I look down to where on
his bed he lay curled under his blanket,
and he’s there, but also not still there as
it was only that morning when I carried
him out to the car for his last journey to
the vets, after we realised that he’d had
enough and now he could go to his rest.

That night he was with us in the house
and the next morning we dug his grave
when there were words to be said about
how much he had meant to us just for
being with us for those nine years and
the taken for granted familiarity of the
daily routines – the long dog walks and
the holidays we planned around him

And how long we could leave him when 
we were out – becoming the third person
in our house, who one day upped and left
and it was as you said it was like stepping 
off a cliff without any sense of a landing
then you got busy, with sorting his things
the little tokens of his life; and yes I know,
when millions are dying what is one dog?

And aren’t we all animals, stating into night;
our emotions cannot change what happens
when faced with extinction, but if we can 
love a dog for just being a dog then maybe
it says something true about ourselves, that
we are also loved for just being human and
by giving some of our love to a dog we can
become loved by far more thereby.

                  I said I heard,
               I thought I heard,
          his feet upon the stairs;
               but memory lied,
              our dog had died,
          i t could not have been
          his feet upon the stairs.

© D G Moody 2024