InsaneJournal

I know a place where pheasants fly to roost
Over wooded land that never knew the plough.
Where honeysuckle ropes hang green and loose
And bluebells' crisp ripe shoots are springing now.

Where wild roses bloom in tangled mats of thorn
Beneath an ash whose leaf-mould turns to loam.
Among the briars, we cleared the virgin earth
And dug his grave, the day we brought him home.

His burnished coat had faded down to grey
And clouded eyes, that once shone dark and deep.
His time had gone, the spring of life unwound
So we laid him easy down, to his last sleep.

The wind fell still, a moment caught on point,
Though through my tears, I neither saw nor heard.
Perhaps he knew, and understood that grief
Had choked away my final, loving word.

I remembered only that I felt his heart
Beat, then pause, then stop beneath my hand.
His body once quicksilver loose and warm
Laid cold and stiff in the embracing land.

A photograph, a drift of scattered hair,
So little left, the bones beneath the earth.
The hunter caught, ensnared by passing time,
So short the passage runs to death from birth.

So on to other dogs and days I go
But in my wake like sparks of sun on frost,
To light the dark, their many candles glow
Precious memories of those I've loved and lost.