The Grapevine Art & Soul Salon

I lost my dog.
Does that mean I no longer have
those three letters D O G in my alphabet?
Then what happens to G O D?
My dog and I are the body of G O D
but can we have BODY without O and D?
That leaves us with BY, as in GOODBYE,
a word that has GOD and BODY and DOG
all tangled up inside it.

What does anything matter
when I’ve lost my dog?

Why should I care about words, about
war and wounds, fugitives and exiles
bombs and guns, school shootings, bullying
name calling, lies, takeovers, manipulation
of populations, loss of habitats, poisoned water
spilled oil: world wasting and exploding and burning
crops failing, children crying, women wailing
men dying? I’ve lost my dog.

My dog Ching: a great love of my life
a dog of integrity whose genes go back to Peking
in China, where they were bred to serve the emperor
where all but four were slaughtered
to prevent the Brits from capturing them when
they stormed the palace just in time to claim the four
who were not dead and took those as loot anyway
to distribute among the privileged back at home.
From those four, we are told, came all that live today:
some black, some tawny like my dog, my Pekingese
shaped like a Chinese dragon kite.

I named him Ching because that sounded right
and also because he still had ceremonial manners
that came no doubt from walking with the emperor.
I felt like an empress whenever we made our way
from chair to bathroom or bed to kitchen
or around the yard sniffing
(if you can call what I did sniffing, because his sense
of smell was 800 times more powerful than mine)
with him ahead of me, looking back over first
one shoulder and then the other to be sure
the empress had her clothes on (a tear-filled joke)
and was paying attention.

Ah, me! The birds still stuff themselves with
sunflower seeds, and the bouquet of sunflowers
on the table left by my son to comfort me
sends out radiance that cannot find my heart
for I’ve lost my dog
and heart has turned to hurt.

His individual droplet in the ocean of soul
came to swim beside me for awhile
before he disappeared once more into the whole
and left me bereft, unmoored, dissembled
trying to find new margins, new meaning
for what we call life on this planet.

I lost my dog
and nothing quite so rare is rearing to meet me
with eyes that hold a darkened universe to play in.
Closing my eyes, I can see him giving his tongue
a spiral twist to retrieve the last crumb of cheese
on the side of my finger.
But that is memory now, and now he is dispersed:
no longer shaped of blood and nerves, bones and fur
that today are being consumed in fire
all but the hardest chips of him.
The mortuary will return to me his remains
along with a print in clay of his paw

but I have lost my dog
and consolation is not near.

Let me see what music I can find
to hear while I am gazing at the photo
I found in my camera.
Let me search my Leonard Cohen songs.
Here is what I want: