Roger Day wrote:
>Welcome back, Kotter.
>
>
At least Gabriel Kaplan lives. Somewhere. Probably with Arnold
Horschack, Vinny Barbarino, and Juan Epstein.
>In sympathy with all cat-owers, here's a poem about dead cats
>
>backend drags liver shunt
>treats do not tempt
>joyful horizon narrowed to a single valley
>throws up one last time in the wardrobe
>fleas thread silver fur, gristle body
>sleeve hooked by claw, going under
>chest burdened by a white mass
>zenith, chokes, then spasms
>pools of urine gather around rear end
>enter unknown territory
>food bowls lost to the depth-deprived
>systemic neurosis clouds morning sunshine
>those "kill me" eyes lurk here at the frontier
>a spider-web of fields laced with spores
>fibro sarcoma, waiting to erupt
>signposts point to grief
>neon turquoise fish flit between mountain passes
>shiny plastic punctures search in vein
>
>
A terrible thing to read because it swings close: a life-scythe for
anyone who has ever loved an animal.
The "kill me" eyes line is not a stretch. A friend of mine who is a
librarian at Drew University used to raise German Shepherds and has
since developed a practice as an animal communicator. Don't laugh too
hard. Some people can tune into what the beasts are telling them. She
assists in dog training. It sounds like Mr. Spock and his mind-melds
but who said that cannot happen? Ginny had a 12-year-old greyhound, a
retired racing dog, who spent his final year being treated for a skin
cancer common to (literally) thin-skinned dogs. Cancer, remission,
reappearance worse than before: an old pattern in humans as well as
animals. At the end she said she could feel Beckett (the dog's name!)
telling her "Let me go." She did what he asked.
Ken
--
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538
Was he free? Was he happy? The question is absurd:
Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
W.H. Auden
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