Cleaving to Another

Inside were six

boxer puppies—two males,

four females,

and we held the

prettiest female first.

She has a white streak

that curves from her nose

to her back like the road

up the mountain.

The breeder said, “That’s Awesome Blossom.”

He was kind of corny like that.

Then we held a male that

the breeder had short-named

“Dozer,” because he puts his head

down when he approaches you,

like he’s cowering.

“He’s the shy one,” the breeder said.

This is when Jill said,

“I can’t decide. I wish we

could get two.”

The breeder jumped in real quick.

“I’ll give you a deal for two.”

So he gave us one. Two for

the price of one, plus a dollar.

And we headed home

with the two of them

in Jill’s lap. She cuddled them.

We turned the cab light on

after we were a few miles

away from the cabin.

We wanted to get a better look at our

purchase and twelve-year commitment.

We threw out names

on the ride home--

Faulkner, Abbie,

Bonnie and Clyde (that was Jill’s).

We finally decided on naming the girl Izzy,

the boy Kerouac.

 

They slept in the bed with us that night.

(Yes, I know.)

And at one point,

in her dreams, Izzy was

sucking her mother’s teat.

It was so sad.

It made me feel guilty for

separating them from their family.

But no one gets to roost

at home for their entire life.

This world is based upon

the simple principle of separation.

We separate at birth

from the womb.

We leave father and mother.

We cleave to another.

The dissertation of life

is that we fracture

on a daily basis.

We break, we lose

parts of ourselves

along the way.

And we spend the rest of our lives

trying to get back to

the teats of our mother—

that place where safety

felt like paradise.

We are Adam and Eve

banging on the door

of Paradise, wanting

back what we once had,

but it’s not there anymore,

not in the way we once

knew it. So we continue

to break apart, to get further and further

away from Paradise.

Sure, we try to recreate it here,

but this place is only the shadow

of perfection. It can’t be obtained,

no matter how hard we try.

So we dream.

We dream of rivers,

deep, dark, muddy rivers.

Our dreams become raisins

in the sun, dried up and unrealized.

But every dream must

pass through the night

before it reaches paradise.

Christ told the thief, “Today,

you will be with me in Paradise.”

And so he was, but not until

death, and death is the

enemy of this place.

So we will die, but until then

we are all stranded

in skin and bones.

There is no way

out of this body.

No holes of escape.

No lagoons of nirvana.

No route for the blood

but round and round.

Sure, we can bleed.

We can bleed until death.

Then the soul will go

somewhere. But who wants to bleed?

Who knows where the soul really goes?

I'm a seeker of grace,

knowing grace will rescue me

from this bag of skin and bones.

If I fall, if I break apart

the everlasting arms

are beneath me.

Deuteronomy 33

²⁷ The eternal God is your refuge,
       and underneath are the everlasting arms.

Empty

Bono was no longer

inside the house,

but his food bowl

was in the kitchen,

the blue sleeping bag

in the corner

where he slept.

 

I put his leash and collar

on the back porch.

He would never meet us

at the backdoor again.

 

Jill fell upon the bed—crying,

and I did my best to hold her,

to be more than a hard-ankle man,

that would say, “Suck it up.

It was only a dog.”

So I held her, and then said,

“Come on, let’s not do this.

Let’s go get a puppy.”

So I called the breeder after she agreed,

and told him we were

coming from Alabama,

that' we’d be leaving

in twenty minutes

to make the three hour trip.

It was 4 pm.

 

We climbed a mountain

in my Ford truck.

We called to let him know

that we were minutes away.

But, after making a wrong turn,

we found ourselves up

a mountain on a narrow road

that made Jill uneasy.

She’s afraid of heights.

She grabbed my leg,

pleading that I turnaround.

“You will go off the side of this mountain.

And no one will ever find us.

Our kids don’t even know we’re doing this.

Please, turnaround.”

I did.

She let go of my leg.

She put her hand to her chest.

Breathed.

 

We found the split-rail fence.

The plow was sitting there too.

Just as he said.

We turned down the long gravel driveway.

The truck shifted its weight

as we climbed along

through the potholes,

and the stars were crazy bright.

Lights doing mad dashes across

the face of nocturnal sleep.

We were in

the mountains of Tennessee.

We could breathe.

 

At the edge of the woods,

we could see a dim window,

the shape of a cabin.

“I hope this is it.”

Before His Body Was Frozen

Before his body was frozen

in the vet’s freezer,

before they crammed him in a box

labeled, “Bono,” we were on our way

to Pikeville, Tennessee,

a little mountain town on

the other side of Chattanooga.

The ad on a website had snapshots,

too vague to see and the puppies

were too bunched up to tell them apart,

so we asked for more pictures, for the number

of males, only to receive a phone call from

the breeder who said,

“I’m new at this emailing pictures thing.”

But soon he succeeded. He made

it work. And all of this happened

before Bono died. We knew it

was coming, knew in our hearts

that we were sitting in the

backyard with Bono for the last time.

He had developed tumors

on his side, on his feet, on his back,

now one beneath his front leg,

so we knew the vet would give us

bad news at a scheduled appointment

later that day. My wife made the appointment

a couple of weeks prior, knowing

things were getting bad.

Bono was resting in the backyard

for the last time.

I knew my wife would mourn,

that she’d cry and hang her harp

in a tree by the Jordan, that she’d

miss her walking buddy

who pulled her around the neighborhood

with a slap-happy smile on his face,

tongue swinging within jaws, but that

had all ended a couple of weeks back.

He’d developed a limp

and hobbled down steps,

unable to get back up without

struggling when he lay down.

So I felt guilty for talking

about puppies in front of him

before the visit to the vet,

but I knew my wife would need a new one,

to get over Bono, and sometimes

the best thing to do is move on.

Bono was the kind of dog that

would want you to move on

and keep the boxer tradition

going in our family. He was

the third after Spike and Rommel.

Spike met a car and

Rommel went to live on a farm

after we moved to the city, but

for nine years Bono had been

with us and had become like

furniture that leaves an empty place

when taken, and we cried

at the vet, and I tried to hide my face

when tears rushed into the moment.

My wife was the first, and when she told him,

“You were such a good boy,”

that was all it took for me

to breakdown too.

After we said good-bye

and after the vet gave him morphine

to calm him down, we kissed him

and turned to leave, and by this time

he was resting on the metal-top table, so

we felt it would be best to sneak away—

out into the daylight with his collar

and leash in hand, while

darkness held him there. But when

the door opened, I heard him

stand.

Here

There