<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">In The End</div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span><span style="font-size: 14px;" class=""><i class="">For Eliot, September 7, 2004</i></span></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">And after everything, what is there to say, really,</div><div class="">to an animal whose death</div><div class="">one has long been expecting?</div><div class="">Perhaps it’s best not to say anything.</div><div class="">Better just to sit with him—</div><div class="">to stroke the fur that no one’s washed in months,</div><div class="">to scratch the ears which no longer hear,</div><div class="">to slowly shift that golden flop of a friend</div><div class="">to the spot he’d loved the best:</div><div class="">a little hilltop overlooking a harbor</div><div class="">where the boats are forever turning</div><div class="">toward the morning light,</div><div class="">where the heron is always just now landing, its ripple a whisper.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">And careful with the legs, which stopped working, forever,</div><div class="">sometime last night, you turn him around gently</div><div class="">so that even though he can’t see so well his body can remember.</div><div class="">And that’s when he raises his fine head just one more time</div><div class="">to honor this slender, splendid patch of life—</div><div class="">the geese flying high and North forever,</div><div class="">the boats with their delicate dance.</div><div class="">He holds his head that way for several minutes though it hurts—</div><div class="">one more time smelling what’s West,</div><div class="">and the breeze dallies one final time </div><div class="">in the soft fur of his chest.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">And that’s when you whisper, though you’re weeping</div><div class="">“It will be okay, it will be okay.”</div><div class="">And he shifts a thick, gentle paw, and somehow it finds your hand.</div><div class="">And may you have the sense, then, to sit with him in silence,</div><div class="">and to understand what he’s been saying all along—</div><div class="">to know, at last, what it means to love the earth this way—</div><div class="">to endure this kind of pain</div><div class="">just for one more morning’s breeze,</div><div class="">and the boats, and the blue,</div><div class="">so much blue. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Lisa Starr</div></div></body></html>