Switchback: From Bliss and Back

~ Live & Learn

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A vicious switchback,
the bliss of last Saturday Morning,
to a routine checkup with the Good Shepherd Vet,
to this.

I clench my jaw while he opens his.
The steroids, tiny pink buttons, are wrapped in lunch meat.
He swallows the care package whole, nose up, sniffing for more.
“Sit!”
He sits.
The medicine dissolves, his belly warms from the Buttons.
His glassy eyes look up drawing up Hirshfield’s Hope and Love:
“I know that hope is the hardest love we carry.”

It’s sad, really.
Complaints about our rock crushing routine, the sameness, the longing for change.

Odd, we are.
Fists clenching Sameness in our maniacal illusion that everything Important will Always be there, Same, unchanged, Forever.

Fragile, we are.
A pebble shifts, disorientation rains, one comes unhinged.

A siren cuts the air in the distance.

A Mourning Dove coos its lament with Hirshfield’s “Come Thief”

“How fragile we are, between the few good moments.”

Notes:

  • Photograph of Zeke (Our Vizsla Dog). Thank you Susan.
  • Related Posts: Zeke Series

32 thoughts on “Switchback: From Bliss and Back”

  1. Precious photo, precious boy. These animals become integral pieces of our heart so quickly and so much a part of the fabric of our lives that it is all too easy to assume that they will always be there…until one day, suddenly, they are not. Savor every moment with your red-headed wild child, pal. So glad he’s feeling better….

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  15. Awww…maybe I missed something. Is he okay? This makes me sad. Bella, my dog, is struggling with something too. She’s been on steroids and antibiotics for over a month now. It’s been weird lately when I look at her (over 7 years old now) and I realize she’s caught up with me. We’re getting old together. And I think we’re both feeling it. Hope Zeke will be okay…precious and beautiful friend of yours.

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