Tag Archives: Dying

Poems & Ashes

It’s so cold today that we gather inside, light her candle, and read Thich Nhat Hanh’s teaching A Cloud Never Dies. 

I can’t read my poem out loud, so each person reads it on their own. 

Then we all go out in the yard and take turns spreading our dog’s ashes together, wherever we feel called.

I spread them beneath my magnolia tree under the branch that extends far out over the grass.   The branch that holds her windchimes now. 

My daughters do the same.

My eldest son chooses the open space where they play, and my youngest goes all around the sliding board.

I am spreading the last of her ashes beneath the wild bushes where the cardinal flew – just behind our firewood, because it feels right for her to be with what transforms.

This is my morning, writing and releasing, preparing a ceremony for our beloved.

We do not keep any of her ashes

except the ones on the wind,

the ones we breathed in.  

I didn’t know I had a dog

Who’s dog is it?
It’s the family’s dog, I laughed.
Oh? Oh, okay. Well, that’s good.

Nine years later my heart heaved.

A few hours later the cardinal came,
and I stood staring out the kitchen window
broom and dustpan in my hands collecting all your hair.

and my heart heaved.

We lay on the floor with you
on the couch
on the floor
on the couch
on the floor with you all the hours of the end of your life

and I didn’t know
and I knew
and I didn’t know
and I knew it was the end
and my heart heaved
and I was scared.

And we all loved you in our own way
in your life and in your death
we all loved you and you were our family’s dog
for sure. But when it was your time and you breathed heavy and hard at the end

something changed in me.

Riding in the passenger seat, my stomach tight and my eyes swollen,
and my chest heaving, I spoke:
I guess she was my dog – and I didn’t know
and she was my dog and I didn’t know
and I didn’t know and
I
didn’t
know.

I was always yours.
And you knew.