Still with those two dogs

I lay there with the two dogs,
watching them sleep on the floor
in the hallway.

The older one stretched up
and then lay down again,
and I saw the tiredness
in his scrawny legs,
and saw the scraggliness of his coat
which happens to old dogs.

I thought about him as a puppy,
how energetically he chased
my brother and me from room to room,
and we would jump up together on the big chair,
- since we were little too -
as he came rushing in.

He's really lasted a long time,
hasn't he?
Despite the way we all
ignore him a little more lately,
despite years of sleeping in hallways,
despite the advance of age,
he keeps living well.

The other dog isn't as old
and isn't as spirited.

If he didn't have
the first dog for company
(I think of them as brothers)
he wouldn't make it.

The younger dog
is fatter than I remember him
and he whimpers as I pet him.

Then I woke up
and remembered:
those dogs died
a long time ago.

But,
I guess I'm still there sometimes,
still pleased to be with those dogs,
to be just another living thing,
resting in some random spot,
not left out of the tapestry of life,
not forgotten,
bur preserved by the fleetingness
of the moment.


-Jim DuBois
May 30, 2002
Jan 22, 2014