You say this so well. To relax our grip and try to abandon our fears of death/abandonment. I feel it applies to every person, place, and thing we love.
Well, holy moly, again! I agree with all, in love, however, with a huge adorable bear of a Bernese Mountain Dog who lives across the street from me, sat patient as the Buddha when it owners were shoveling snow, and I think of corrupting John Milton, They also serve who sit and wait. Carry on, Alan!
The poem feels like someone trying to make sense of the wild, beautiful recklessness that lives inside every dog.
Those signs on Highway 97 hit hard, as if the landscape itself remembers all the dogs who ran too far.
The stone wall as a launch point is so vivid you can almost see the excitement before the danger.
You feel how dogs chase the world with their whole bodies, following scent and wind like nothing else matters.
The poem understands that they hear a call we never will, and they follow it without hesitation.
That instinct is part of what we love in them, even when it scares us.
The question of how we rest, knowing this, feels painfully honest.
Dogs run toward life with a kind of joy we can’t help admiring.
And they run toward us with the same devotion, which is its own kind of miracle.
In the end, the poem becomes a soft ache: loving dogs means loving something that always runs ahead of us, sometimes too far.
So well said
What Mr. Angel said. Thanks, Adriao.
It seems that some of us humans also seem to follow the scent, unleashed and without assessing the danger involved.
Indeed. Thanks, Carole.
You say this so well. To relax our grip and try to abandon our fears of death/abandonment. I feel it applies to every person, place, and thing we love.
There's that ancient idea again: Mono no aware
Ah, thanks, and thanks, too, for reminding me of the Japanese!
...not to mention our best friends' sense of smell!
Ah, but I do!
Well, holy moly, again! I agree with all, in love, however, with a huge adorable bear of a Bernese Mountain Dog who lives across the street from me, sat patient as the Buddha when it owners were shoveling snow, and I think of corrupting John Milton, They also serve who sit and wait. Carry on, Alan!
Snow everywhere except where I am, on Canada's west coast! Thanks, Kenneth.
I prefer dogs with uncropped tails.
- Wisława Szymborska
Oh, the dog in the photo, yes. Could easily play mad libs with that line ;-) Thanks, Donal.
Our family got a dog last year. So much fun. I'm writing a piece about it. I'll DM you the rough draft.