Not So Easy

It is not so easy to forgive old dogs and old friends dying on you. Once I had a mongrel pup got her from a shady pet store back in a shabby past. Parvo came and she went - not easy. Once, an old blind Sheltie came to visit from me from an afterlife. That ghost-dog looked like a friend I had never really known. She still loved me; that kind of love is never easy to lose. Dad, you give us a victory salute on your way to the chemotherapy unit. I realized how courageous in the face of a famishing cancer you were but only some years later when I recalled my own cowardice. Those kind of memories are never going to be easy. My friend was a poet of God; He sang like a toad on a sinking lily pad and did not care if he drowned with his lovely mouth still open wide. Why did you still sing on that death-bed Ted? Why did a spirit fly from your lips as a puff of pure light after you asked for one last cigarette? When you fell upwards I heard the sky crack the roof of the world then you were gone - and not the easy way.