May 5, 2012
It’s an odd thing to mourn the loss of a dog not your own, to confront that pain circuitously. Our friend’s gargantuan & idiosyncratic & incredibly well-loved buddy, at rest & gone from us down in Palmer. & Solo in the meantime with three staples in his head where T’s teeth gnashed & gnawed. In wrestling them apart in a willow copse mottled with snow to see his eyes stretched back under the ceaseless pressure of jaw. A dog’s screaming is nothing you forget. & in the end, it’s another in a long series of dog fights we’ll break up & the wounds are relatively small & will heal fine, but there is the part of me in which these things coalesce to demand an attention to inevitability & time. You forget with dogs sometimes, when they are pleased & you are pleased, when you all fall into your natural cycles together, that their care is such an earnest & ongoing responsibility. That you will pour your love into them & that it will crush you when th