dedicated to the memory of my friend Chris and, equally, to the memory of his friend, Meg

Photo by Chris Anderson on Unsplash

A flick of her tail
showed more uncluttered love
than a lifetime’s worth of empty ‘Hellos’.
As Aeschylus implied so-long ago
there is no type or condition
of suffering or pain
which is not made worse
by re-calling the glory days:
times languorous, 
meandering puppy-walks,
times of plunging in wild abandon
into the freezing Irish sea.
Walter Scott suspected
that dogs’ short lives
were lived with compassion
for their human friends.
Imagine the grief
if she had lived to be fifty.
Dogs teach us about
ihe intimate connection
between love and loss.
These words did not amend
my friend’s grief.
For everyone can master a grief
except, of course, s/he who has it.

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