Ode to Mr. Spock
He was a member of the tribe of Wolf
And he was partly of the pure blood
Which made him moody
And sensitive to the secrets hidden in the night.
And while he seemed to yearn so earnestly
For the love of small children
Their fat sticky toes
And wet chubby cheeks yelling “doggy!”
In those utterly desperate voices (as though
They had unexpectedly alighted upon, amidst this bland Earth life
Something very important that had been left behind
In that Other life from which they’d so recently emerged)
We couldn’t always trust him
To lick tenderly with his enormous ham slice of a tongue
Trust the harvest moons of his eyes
To always contain the steadfast, avuncular understanding
Of his more domesticated brethren.
And so in public his mouth was encased
In a clamp of plastic bars.
He hated it.
He was a prisoner
And we cried for him.
When he died so unexpectedly
It was clear
Simply clear
The secrets of the night had taken him.
The tribe of Wolf had reclaimed him
Seeing his unfitness for leashes
And the bristled little gloves we put on
Trying to brush his teeth
That gleaming set of white knives tucked
Into the dark velvet box of his mouth.
We buried him in the backyard
Letting ragweed and chamomiles grow
Like a wild man’s beard over the small hump of his grave.
When I had the vision of him, he wasn’t
A dog at all but a boy
With shining hair and brilliant, sharp white teeth.
And I watched while he scrambled angrily up
A steep, scraggly hillside and then dove, relieved and compelled
Into a green pool of water so completely lit from underneath
It was as if the sun herself hibernated at the bottom.
I’m not the only one.
My aunt by marriage—who is no longer
My aunt by marriage—
Had a vision of her sheepdog after he died
In a bathroom stall at Cracker Barrel.
She came back out to my uncle and her white gravy and grits
But she was never the same.
As for me I have taken the green pool
Into the deepest recess of my heart.
It has become my true north