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VARIATIONS ON A THEME
I: TWO DOGS
When I am ready to depart,
let Huddy and Mitchell
pull my cart, loaded deep
with a broken heart
and grief for two dogs,
one gold, one black,
who laid down one day
and never came back.
This brace of dogs, the Loyal Two,
friends in joy, in hardship true,
comrades from a different world,
who taught me things I thought I knew,
but above all, a simple notion
expressed unspoken every day.
If they could, I think they’d say:
“Love is a nickname for devotion.”
2018
II: MITCHELL
(2006-2018)
I feel obliged to say
he wasn't my dog,
I wasn't his master,
he cut his own way,
and kept his own counsel,
a comrade from a different world,
he taught me things I thought I knew,
above all, a simple notion
expressed unspoken every day.
If he could, I think he'd say:
“Love is a nickname for devotion.”
May 30, 2018