twenty-nine

black dog

so handsome and strong

your entire life

spent on the end of a short chain

in the hot humid sun

in the pouring tropical rain

kept by a heartless, cruel master

sores festering your limbs

ticks crawling over your body like acne

I buy you off the chain

with a pound of sugar

and a lot of love

I give you a few weeks of relentless freedom

to run unendingly about

madly around the compound

I clean off your ticks

and fatten you up with scraps

I give you a few brief weeks of patient

careful attention

but you prove too hard to handle

difficult and uncontrollable

too much for me to deal with all the time

so I deliver you to the dog shooter

who must put you down forever

and as I put you into that small kennel cage

alongside all the other yelping, crying animals

your eyes knowingly look into mine

a look of sensitive intelligence

of ultimate abandonment and betrayal

penetrating deeply into my soul

the only person in the world you trusted

who allowed you off that cruel chain

with the total devotion only a dog knows

now I have forsaken you

and somehow you know

in some uncanny way

that your time had come

I walk slowly away

not looking back

as I hear you howling miserably in the distance

I listen to your howling

all night long

calling for me to come back to get you

On the way home the next day

walking by that dreaded, terrible place

I sense something strange in the air

there is only a silence hanging heavy

the shooter looks annoyed with me

as he shows me the carcass in the truck

the bloody head wrapped in newspaper

I stroke its stiff flank with my hand

one last time

before I finally turn away

unable to keep back the tears

the storm then came in mid-day

the rain and thunder was heavy that day