Why do we insist on loving old dogs?
We could escape the inevitable pain
Of their inevitable demise
By simply never loving at all.
In that, you’ll find every answer.
Why are we moved to love?
We know that death always wins.
Always. The grizzled, twitching hound,
The lifelong partner, pal, or parent.
Death takes them all or it takes you first.
Every time, every love
In human history.
Death takes them all.
Lowly old hounds,
Intense first loves,
Courtly fools—
It does not matter.
So, why love?
Is love pretense that things are okay?
An escape from the waiting room of death
For an instant, an hour—even a lifetime
If you’re that lucky one who goes first?
Is that the joy of having children—
You leave them to grieve for you?
Or do we need to learn
This lesson: that Love is
Hopeless and necessary
If we are to live in this world.
And we have no other, after all.
You accept the painful tangle of grief
For something so paltry and uncomplicated
As the affection of an old dog?
In the sterile waiting room
Everything is so clear,
So obviously inevitable
And without hope.
We cannot live and stay
In a sterile waiting room.
We are neither the wise
Or the invulnerable who can sit there
As death sharpens his blade for us.
We must go out
Beyond that door to live.
The living are those
That keep piling in
And passing through
This room,
Sobbing and laughing,
Not noticing the deadly still
And sterile smell as they
Try and fail to keep close
That wet old dog with the twitching leg
That always in life just thrilled at being alive
And now moves faster through that door
Than we can follow
Until our time is come.
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