Dog Years
by Michael Bazzett
We’re all aware that when we are walking the dog, and he spends an hour lovingly sniffing posts and tufts, and we then return home and his tongue hangs from his panting mouth,
that somehow seven hours have passed for him, which means that, allotting time for grieving, our lives consist of maybe five dogs, and when we clutch the slack skin behind a puppy’s ear, when
we gather up that impossibly soft coat into our fists, part of the stabbing intensity of our grip comes from grief. Right there. Even as that soft pink tongue is licking you. But what we do not
consider often enough is that old-growth maples peer down at us in the same way, bewildered by how soon we are gone, how little we grasp while we’re here, at our odd rootless ways of love.
