2nd Prize, Burnie Gold Pot 2012

Rusty

We buried Rusty yesterday, down the paddock by a log.

He had no graveside service - just got treated like a dog.

I still remember him, that first time that we met,

hanging ’round our backdoor, I heaved a boot at him, yelled:      “Get!”

But he stood his ground unflinching, looking up as if to say:

“Not likely mate... I chose this place and here I’m gonna stay.”

We tossed him an odd bone ’til we could decide his fate,

but we were slow, some weeks went by, and by then it was too     late.

He took it on himself, right off, to guard the place all night and     day

and he became a sort of fixture, just getting tucker as his pay.

From then on we never lost a chook to sly marauding fox,

nor intruder enter in our home despite the broken locks.

Though he looked a useless, scruffy mutt of no specific breed,

he became our full-time watchdog - although we’d never seen the deed.

He had walked around the kennel I built to keep him from the rain,

then cocked his leg up on it and walked away in cold disdain!

That was the only time we ever saw him give it any heed,

and he wouldn’t enter in this thing for which he felt no need.

Instead he slept upon the mat just outside the kitchen door,

oblivious to cold or wet that soaked him to the core.

If visitors or strangers encroached upon his space

he’d sit there like a statue, his eyes focussed on my face.

Had I but given whisper, or shown a hint of fear,

the stranger would have lost a chunk of trousers, leg or rear!

Yet with kiddies he was like a lamb and so too with my wife.

I felt that he would willingly protect them with his life.

But dogs grow old, just as we do, when years scurry by so fast,

and yesterday he took the breath that was to be his last.

How do you mourn a dog like that? To him tears meant not a thing.

No eulogy will bring him back, nor hymns that we might sing.

His only chosen comfort had been that backdoor mat

so we laid his body down, neatly wrapped up inside that,

when we buried rusty yesterday down the paddock by a log,

without a graveside service, and just treated like a dog.

© Pete Stratford 17.6.2012