thenewgreen you may not want to read this one, might hit a little too close to home (and sorry for that).
In other news I am proud to announce I have finally got the hang of putting pictures into Wordpress pages! I'm not a technological idiot after all, only an idiot savant!
Why wouldn't a dog be a good topic for poetry? Moreover, why wouldn't a dead dog be? Dogs are perfect companions, the ideal vestiges of unconditional love. We like to use the phrase "unconditional love" in regards to our human relationships, but really... when has that EVER been true?
Because dogs are such great companions, the idea of them dying can be really jarring. Obviously, as you know I can speak to this knowingly due to recent events, but I'll not do that here. Not now. But I will mention a scene from my past that I've not written about on Hubski. It was definitely "jarring".
After we were married, my wife and I honeymooned in The Dominican Republic. We stayed in Puerto Plata, in a gated all-inclusive resort. We quickly became tired of the buffet style accommodations and the watered down drinks and prefabbed ambiance. We decided we were going to venture outside the gates of the resort and in to the real Puerto Plata.
When we left the gates, there was a man that looked at us like... are you sure you want to leave..? As soon as we opened the gate the world seemed to move more quickly. People were whizzing around on motorcycles, sometime three people deep. You would see the occasional gringo in the back of a cab shuffling their hands busily about the seat looking for a seat belt that didn't exist. Beggers at bus-stops, vendors with fruit and so much color.
We were excited.
We took about twenty steps until we smelled something awful. We looked beside the walkway and there was a dead dog. It looked familiar to us and we soon realized why. We had seen the same dog on the beach the day prior. We had pet it and my wife took the time to pour fresh water in to a cup for it to drink out of.
She immediately began to cry.
We turned back and headed to our little gated community where there were no dog carcasses. It is an image that has never left me and has certainly never left my wife.