Willow Two passed Nov. 20

 

We lost the farm dog Willow Two in Nov. Although unrelated, she looked

a lot like the original Willow shown in the blog banner. She was the sweetest 

of dogs and beloved by the whole family. She has a friend to foxes and a

terror to snakes. She liked to excavate a hole  at the bottom of the side 

steps to use for naps. And she loved snacks.

She was a good dog.

"Because of the dog's joyfulness, our own is increased. It is no small gift.

 It is not the least reason why we should honor as love the dog of our own life, 

and the dog down the street, and all the dogs not yet born."

Mary Oliver

I am having trouble with my external drive and was limited

 in the number of photos I can access.

Jaime Royal "Robbie" Robertson[1] OC (July 5, 1943 – August 9, 2023) Sixto Diaz Rodriguez (July 10, 1942 – August 8, 2023) I felt these.

Last night in bed while listening to their music I read these words. RIP fellows.

"Let seed be grass, and grass turn into hay:

I'm a martyr to a motion not my own:

what's freedom for? To know eternity.

from I Knew a Woman

Theodore Roethke

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/10/robbie-robertson-obituary

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/aug/10/rodriguez-obituary

 

Shaun 2002 - Feb. 28, 2020

"I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief." Wendell Berry

Shaun and Wendolene came into our lives in May of 2006 from the Calgary Humane Society. Wendolene would have been around 7 and Shaun 4. They had to be taken as a pair which is something we wanted anyway. We lost Wendolene in Oct of 2012.

https://thatsjustthewildwood.blogspot.com/2012/10/in-may-2006-we-wanted-to-adopt-couple.html

https://sunisaxeman.blogspot.com/2012/11/blog-post.html

Today we had to say goodbye to Shaun. He had been coughing for 3 weeks but was good enough to go for a walk around the nearby cresent Sunday. But time caught up with him this week and this morning we had to make a difficult decision.

 

He was very old for a Shih Tzu but in very good shape and able to keep up with the younger dogs on walks. Last night at the vets may have been the first night he spent without either Wendolene or Whateley by his side. He was a black hole for blankets pulling them all into his orbit and then shuttling either Helen or I uncovered to the edge of the bed. Most days on the couch he would come for a chest rub, first licking (once or twice) nipping my nose and then sneezing in my face before growling ferociously the entire time. As we both grew older and greyer I used to joke that if we wore hats you could not tell us apart.  He loved pasta appearing in the kitchen whenever he suspected it was on the menu often eating spaghetti like an unnamed movie icon. 

He normally accepted the changes in his life stoically whether it was his new friend Max...,

or the younger more energetic playmate Whateley who would keep Shaun's face clean for the rest of  his life. And they could both rock the sweaters Rigmor made them.

Although he generally was not one for outfits

.


This walk did inspire a poem.
https://sunisaxeman.blogspot.com/2011/04/ice-once-you-folded-entire-continents.html

Shaun's reaction to the cabin was funny. The first year we stayed two weeks. We had a couple lawn chairs and some cheap lanterns. He was quite put out. When the somewhat tacky Brick sofa showed up he was somewhat mollified. He also hated that nettles grew on the newly plowed lane. Even in Calgary a fairly soft spruce needle was cause to be carried some distance. But eventually he became quite the explorer although the couch was best. In the last few years I have begun to suffer from insomnia and so get up at night to read or putz around. But eventually Shaun would appear, if the bedroom door was closed he would demand that it be opened so he could find me and bring me back to bed to unite the family. Because family was everything to him. You will always be loved, always be missed little man.

Shaun feels I have gone on long enough so let's end with something short.

https://sunisaxeman.blogspot.com/2011/08/summers-hot-breath-small-dog-pants.html

W. S. Merwin, Poen and Conservationist, September 30, 1927-March 16, 2019

We lost another poet, W.S. Merwin, Friday. 

I think it is safe to say he was a favourite of mine. 

I hope he has passed through the gate 

and found his friends waiting there.

For the Anniversary of My Death

W.S. Merwin

Every year without knowing it I have passed the day   

When the last fires will wave to me

And the silence will set out

Tireless traveler

Like the beam of a lightless star

Then I will no longer

Find myself in life as in a strange garment

Surprised at the earth

And the love of one woman

And the shamelessness of men

As today writing after three days of rain

Hearing the wren sing and the falling cease

And bowing not knowing to what

"I turned

uphill to come to the top gate and the last barn 

the sun still in the day and my shadow going on 

out into the upland and I saw they were milking 

it was that hour and it seemed all my friends were there 

we greeted each other and we walked back out to the gate 

talking and saw the last light and our shadows gesturing 

far out along the ridge until the darkness gathered them 

and we went on standing here believing there were other words 

we stood here talking about our lives in the autumn. " 

                                      From his poem Gate

A lovely discussion of the poem Gate can be found here at The Globe and Mail's,  How Poems Work;

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/how-poems-work/article4129599/

Links to tributes can be found here

https://www.staradvertiser.com/2019/03/16/hawaii-news/w-s-merwin-prize-winning-poet-and-ardent-naturalist-dies-in-his-maui-home/

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/obituaries/w-s-merwin-dead-poet-laureate.html 

https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/03/15/crashing-w-s-merwins-wedding/

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/15/509122300/poet-w-s-merwin-who-was-inspired-by-conservation-dies-at-91

https://theamericanscholar.org/there-is-no-time-in-the-garden/#.XI0yoBNKi9Y

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/collections/144293/remembering-ws-merwin
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/W-S-Merwin-poet-of-austere-lyricism-who-twice-13692721.php

https://www.vogue.com/article/ws-merwin-obituary?verso=true

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/15/ws-merwin-poet-laureate-dies-91

First draft/ The Poems Themselves

When the poet dies
it isn't like the end of coal
or the domestic auto industry.
The assembly lines don't pause
lake freighters aren't stilled at their docks
few jobs are lost, mortgages defaulted.

If they were old
maybe the poems ended years ago,
and their publisher has been compiling
their old essays for decades.

And after some lamentations, public
private, their world will still
save for the whispering, 
rustling of the poems themselves
as someone in need of something
alights among them
and learns of the smell of an old barn
in 1956 or the look on the faces of deer.

Guy

Sad news.

"I'm never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective. "

Anthony Bourdain 

"Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die."

Carrie Fisher

" He sighed, more exhaustedly than regretfully, I thought. That morning was the last time I saw Moreland. It was also the last time I had, with anyone, the sort of talk we used to have together. Things drawing to a close, even quite suddenly, was hardly a surprise. The look Moreland had was the one people take on when a stage has been reached quite different from just being ill.

from Temporary Kings ( A Dance to the Music of Time )

by Anthony Powell

This morning we said goodbye to our cat Max. For many years, he sat with me in the morning before the rest of the house was up. And in the evening the two of us would sit in my study to read or watch hockey while the rest of the family was in the living room. This summer he spent 3 months at the cabin with us, mostly sleeping on the screened in porch in a state of feline bliss. It was only a few months ago when his health started to fail that I came to appreciate the tremendous gap he would leave.

Max and I collaborated on this poem in April of 2012

it was a happier time. Rest in love little man.

The Cat Wishes to Use the Pen

by Max

To write doubtless, 

about the space under the rug where he keeps things and 

the spot under the coffee table where he also keeps things

including himself, dreaming of jungle, he would like to

immortalize lurking unseen.

Unless he wants a drink in which case he will write 

of the white porcelain tub where he sits demanding 

a drink from the faucet. Or yowling through the house 

until someone follows him to his dish to witness 

the wonder of a feeding cat.

He would include a triumphant inventory of the 

clawed furniture, the red leather chair, the sofa, the 

good Lazy Boy. The declawed cat broke lamps but he

is all about fabric, sweaters, wedding dresses, 

comforters and of course the good Lazy Boy.

He would surely write about laying across a warm chest 

with one paw extended purring happily. But there will be

no mention of the small white dog who sniffs his butt,

let him write his own poem.

"The thudding sound from the quarry had declined now to no more than a gentle reverberation, infinitely remote. It ceased altogether at the long drawn wail of a hooter - the distant pounding of centaurs' hoofs dying away, as the last note of their conch trumpeted out over hyperborean seas. Even the formal measure of the seasons seemed suspended in the wintry silence."

from Hearing Secret Harmonies ( A Dance to the Music of Time )

by Anthony Powell