Sunday, February 17, 2008

with apologies . . .

. . . a deceased pet poem.


Mutt

No one really got you.
“What breed is that?”
we’d hear, or even
“that dog’s crazy.”

Complex is more like it.
You could be aloof,
affectionate, antsy,
obedient, devious,
curious, oblivious,
gluttonous, generous,
ebullient, eager, lazy -
thrilled to be alive.

And you always
smelled pretty good.
At least until the end,
when your own cells
rebelled against the
demands of cleanliness.

Maybe that’s what
finally did you in:
a gene pool too rich
for its own good.

Your blueprint of self
possessed a degree
of individuation
incompatible with
this picky world.

So somewhere in
your saga of
molecular independence
you stopped being you,
and with such short notice
became part of the rest.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

No apologies necessary. The most we have ever cried was when Harpo (the giant cat from Hell who lived with us at El Tesoro) got hit by a car and died. Of course, you should have seen the car.

Phil Poulter said...

I remember that cat.

jennifer black said...

This is a beautiful poem, Phil. Chumpy was lucky to have you for a dad.