Now he’s gone, I left the gate open on my way back from splitting wood. My arms were full. But I felt that worry in my gut, the need to protect him from all harm, a crazy, impossible boon.
The desire we have to continue doing what we have done before, although it no longer makes sense. To close the gate, as if that would keep safely contained what is already gone. To honor our dead, to tell them wherever they are they still rule our hearts, and the roost they’ve barely left behind.
Tonight the tracks appeared wide and velvet pawed splayed across the new snow the way nothing had ever touched the white expanse of T Bone’s winter kingdom before.
In the muffled blackness, long past midnight he would bark and run out to warn them off. Less than a week and the message must have traveled on the wind, his missing scent, his bags of frozen poop collected and burnt.
Now they come to ravage, pounce, and scramble, loiter in the snowy corner yard, cavorting inside his fence, as if some pheromone message told them he was gone.
Coyotes, hares, foxes, hungry in his wake. I wish I’d saved his turds, his stink. I wish this wildness had gone the other way.
Gradually I open my arms to them, toss his kibble everywhere. Invite the wildness in.
