love – letters to strangers

The trainer told all of us fur-baby parenters:
“Your puppy will maybe, one day, find
the trash can is transfigured into a monster.
Don’t fixate on the fear, don’t be unkind.
It will pass in time.”

My puppy, vibrating, electric with curiosity,
not so much wagging her tail
as she is radiating that lumosity
from snout to the very tips of her hair and nails.
Trying to pass the time.

“I’ll outlive her” appears from inner recesses,
like I did the one that came before.
He, too, once trembled with newness
and feared things like a slammed door.
Memory of a past time.

Held his head gently in my lap,
breath rattling in his now emaciated chest.
Right up until his last gasp
the good boy was wagging his best
to remind me of our good times.

Ten thousand years ago, when the first
of us first belly rubbed the first of them,
did they know the bond would one day burst
hard hearts with the hum
of love passing time.

Share