An epitaph

My dog had died at a kennel
I wasn’t there to tell her she was loved
I wondered if she had felt abandoned.
I felt as though I had failed,
In her moment of need.
She was alone and might have been sad
She didn’t speak in words
But her eyes always spoke to me with sounds that I heard.

She had suffered from PTSD
When she had arrived at our place
She had been to six different homes
Before finding her homestead.
She ran away often, they had said.
Bella had looked disheveled and underfed.
But I told her that we would
Enjoy our travel together in the picturesque life on the farm
As I fed the pigs and plowed the ground to grow our food
She sat by the road and I admired her charm.

I had learnt to love Bella
She always reciprocated by placing her head on my lap
When I sat on a bench next to the barn.
She liked the cat food that I started giving her.
She had found in me something she had liked more than before.

The eyes of the Great Pyrenees
Are most kind with bluish-green hue
Bella had looked in my eyes
I knew then that she had asked, “Will you love me?”

We became friends
She sat in the back of the mule
Always, and whenever I went somewhere
She just wanted to be near me!
We had bonded forever.

I had told her that she would never be lonely being with me
She just looked at me
As though I had meant something
We had shared our grief together
She knew that I had lost my mother too!

Bella and I walked together
In the woods
She always returned after chasing a rabbit or two
She knew that loving meant transferring a feeling of warmth
From each other
Without talking
Just being
And feeling
As we did, as two.

We talked about possible separation
In future, as it was bound to be
I made sure she knew that in our solitude
There would be no sense of loneliness
‘Cause our love was like the leaves in Fall
That blow in the wind from the trees only to renew
Stronger in Spring with new colors and sinew.

Though we could be isolated and sad
Our love would always be honored and never be severed
And grief wouldn’t be disenfranchised.
‘Cause we were forever together undeterred.