I could write about the tiny Arabian horse,
her pale matted coat grown to maximum
for the winter, nature knowing what her children
need toward the end of life, once luster
and beauty as only youth can confer; later,
stripped back to essentials, hip bones protruding
over swayed back, the preciousness
of her fragile locomotion, the gentle spirit;
Then there’s the big white Lab, black eyes
full of fathomless joy at our arrival,
departure, the smallest things as perhaps
only dogs appreciate in that canine way,
his considerable bulk leaned against my body
as I come closer, claiming me before his jouncy
friend and companion has the chance;
The world lost both within two days of late,
and I am left to ponder the transience of life
on this planet, how what seems unfair is simply
what is, the twisted gnarly trunk of the cedar,
twinned to the pine in youth, never able
to break free and take a form more pleasing,
the coupling of two cutting life short for both,
neither able to fully flourish;
And how are we so different? Where we choose
to invest our energy, how we support others with
or without their appreciation, leaning
into the wind or onto one another for support,
gazing at the landscape around us with wondering
eyes, taking for granted our singular human capacity
to notice and imprint, categorizing each encounter
with emotional hues, pleasing or not, while these
unconditionally loving four leggeds greet us
afresh and anew, as if we have not cast
a single black mark on this wide, wide world.
I should add that the horse and the dog spoken of ‘belong’ to neighbors and friends who are near to to us. We watch one neighbor’s horses frolicking daily in the pasture directly downhill from our house, I just happened to see the white horse down one recent afternoon, and by evening, she was no longer in this world. The big white Lab ‘belongs’ to a friend in the community, and he met his end on the highway a day later. Our world seems less colorful without them.
belas bright ideas 