Poems for a Sculpture #111380

my mother and her loyal companion

Many many years ago on this day our dog Rusty was hit by a car. I was watching the Flintstones. My mother came into the kitchen. I screamed. My father buried her under a field of black-eyed Susans (can we unpack this?) in the back yard in Michigan. I never saw her body. It might have been the same year the Challenger crashed. Sally Ride. A TV was rolled into the classroom, wait, no I was already in California. What happened? The memories slip and slide. It takes blurry grey scale mental images of architecture to remind me of time. Otherwise it all just happened.

Mind soup.

Rusty. Her coat was a true dark russet. Deep earthy red. I just started to love her. When she’d run and turn a corner across the waxy wet lawn, under the pines and bowing maples, sometimes she’d slip or more accurately flip in a twist, yet always land on her fast four propelled to her destination in a feat of extra-human agility.

Then she was gone. And then we had to go. Us, during that short time in our 4 lives when we lived together. We had an obligation. Hotels and indoor swimming pools. I recall feeling feelings way beyond my ears, thinking at 8 yrs old, this is all so absurd. We just lost one of our pack and now we’re at the Hilton swimming...