Shawn L. Bird

Original poetry, commentary, and fiction. All copyrights reserved.

Poem- GRATITUDE April 9, 2016

Filed under: Poetry — Shawn L. Bird @ 9:30 am
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It is lonely

Seeing ghosts of wagging tails

Dancing feet and twinkling eyes.

To remember joy made physical

Only because of my existence.

It is lonely

To catch the movements

From the corners of my eyes

Of furry bodies no longer present.

Grief is a hard, hard, hard burden.

But you,

Are lighter without the responsibility

Lighter with the freedom

Lighter  from the consequences.

Lighter with the isolation

That is not loneliness to you.

But oh,

It is to me,

And my heavy heart struggles

With this burden of grief.

Knowing you.  Knowing me.

Knowing the sacrifice you make

To bring some relief from grief,

To bring me a piece of joy again,

Wagging on the tip

of a tiny tail.

 

2016/04/08

 

poem-Dusty July 16, 2014

Filed under: Poetry,poodles — Shawn L. Bird @ 10:04 pm
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Little brown

Dusty dog

shadow at my

feet

Your blind eyes no

longer help you  pick a ball out of the air

leaping four times your height

cookies tossed at your mouth

now bounce off your nose.

Your sore hips

aren’t stable enough

for you to beg

or dance

or roll over

any more.

But still you follow

whenever I leave the room

attached to my ankle

just to be beside me,

my little brown

love

shadow.

.

.

.

When this little brown poodle pup came to live with us, his name was MacBeth.  As a family we debated whether to call him Dusty (after the Dusty Strings harps, since he’d be the only Dusty I could afford) or Shadow.  He became Dusty, but he was always Shadow.