In The End - Lisa Starr

[Larry Robinson]

In The End
	For Eliot, September 7, 2004

And after everything, what is there to say, really,
to an animal whose death
one has long been expecting?
Perhaps it’s best not to say anything.
Better just to sit with him—
to stroke the fur that no one’s washed in months,
to scratch the ears which no longer hear,
to slowly shift that golden flop of a friend
to the spot he’d loved the best:
a little hilltop overlooking a harbor
where the boats are forever turning
toward the morning light,
where the heron is always just now landing, its ripple a whisper.

And careful with the legs, which stopped working, forever,
sometime last night, you turn him around gently
so that even though he can’t see so well his body can remember.
And that’s when he raises his fine head just one more time
to honor this slender, splendid patch of life—
the geese flying high and North forever,
the boats with their delicate dance.
He holds his head that way for several minutes though it hurts—
one more time smelling what’s West,
and the breeze dallies one final time 
in the soft  fur of his chest.

And that’s when you whisper, though you’re weeping
“It will be okay, it will be okay.”
And he shifts a thick, gentle paw, and somehow it finds your hand.
And may you have the sense, then, to sit with him in silence,
and to understand what he’s been saying all along—
to know, at last, what it means to love the earth this way—
to endure this kind of pain
just for one more morning’s breeze,
and the boats, and the blue,
so much blue. 

	- Lisa Starr
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