Quiet stations found in companionship
This is for my dear friend JoAnn, who lost one of her companions earlier this month. This is for all of us who have ever known the love of an animal and the bond that never breaks.
Laika
There were the days they hunted with us, the long hours spent
flushing underbrush, scenting spoor and leavings, catching
something invisible on winds that carried little or nothing for us.
There were trusted eyes, the vigilance of loyalty and the quiet
stations found in companionship. Tails that wagged the world in
ways a lie cannot intrude or dispel kept the cadence of feral love
calibrated and constant, measured by paw and pant the true natures we share. Whose ears to amend our own? Whose raucous alarms to warn and keep wary all that would dare bring harm or hector?
There are passages that make their way right through the middle of us. By fur and furlong, worlds created together remain intact, carry beyond their time the hillworn dimming that suddens to make room for nightfall.
It is here we must tread, the lasting acres summoned and encompassed by those whose time, though brief, continues essential and undiminished by what the world would seek to take. They belong entirely to us now.
The world must fend for itself.
Joseph Gallo
July 6, 2006
Laika
There were the days they hunted with us, the long hours spent
flushing underbrush, scenting spoor and leavings, catching
something invisible on winds that carried little or nothing for us.
There were trusted eyes, the vigilance of loyalty and the quiet
stations found in companionship. Tails that wagged the world in
ways a lie cannot intrude or dispel kept the cadence of feral love
calibrated and constant, measured by paw and pant the true natures we share. Whose ears to amend our own? Whose raucous alarms to warn and keep wary all that would dare bring harm or hector?
There are passages that make their way right through the middle of us. By fur and furlong, worlds created together remain intact, carry beyond their time the hillworn dimming that suddens to make room for nightfall.
It is here we must tread, the lasting acres summoned and encompassed by those whose time, though brief, continues essential and undiminished by what the world would seek to take. They belong entirely to us now.
The world must fend for itself.
Joseph Gallo
July 6, 2006
post-time 8:14 AM
2 Comments:
Beautiful, Joseph. It carries me into a twilight of sadness. Bless the animals.
Joseph, another gorgeous, touching lament. It is out of compassion that such glorious peotry can be written, surely.
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