With this poem the requirement of a poem per day for National Poetry Writing Month will be fulfilled. Bonus/extra poetry will appear under “NaPoWriMo Poem for April 31,” “NaPoWriMo Poem for April 32,” etc. We’ll see if I can get to April 50 before the end of the month. [smiles]

not a love letter to a dead dog or two, but it might as well be

he was my best friend
and his name courtesy of my daughter
was william doglas bowers.

that’s not a typo. it’s d-o-g-l-a-s.
i haven’t seen him in nigh on five years,
because that’s when he died.

i harbor no illusions that he’s smiling down at me from dog heaven;
even if there was one, he’d have far better things to do;
but no, my sad surmise is that when he got the big sleep
courtesy of the strong drug intravenously applied
that smacked him so hard his eyes never closed
he was completely extinguished,

and that,
given the joy he gave me and the rest of his family,
defines tragedy better than any play or headline.

i so hope i am wrong.
some quantum physicists are now bruiting about the continuity of consciousness
via transport of the energy state/configurations in “brain microtubules,”
but i think even the smartest of us are desperate enough
to indulge in creative wishful thinking.
i am glad that they think so, though,
especially since they are smarter than me.

if bill does indeed continue,
and if further he’s free of the dysplasia and other physical woes he wore,
then that undoubtedly means that cowboy,
dog of my childhood,
has persisted.
they may even meet and exchange that-stupid-gary stories.
they may romp,
with bill mocking his dysplasia as romplstiltskin,
and cowboy might then reenact his epic encounter with the horse in the meadow,
or the skunk at camp geronimo,
but all of this has a probability vanishingly small.

i wish i could tell bill
about this other bill
who is only vaguely doglike,
and that only in the fact that he does amazing tricks,
only they’re with words.

i wish i could tell cowboy
that that line in the song “mister bojangles” is an understatement.
“after twenty years he still grieves.”
twenty years?
chicken feed…