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Song of the Empathetic Beast (an elegy)
by Susan McCaslin,
Langley BC
The
following was written in memory of Mark & Susan’s beloved miniature
Australian
shepherd Penny, who was struck and killed by a truck in front of
their home on the night of Dec. 27,
2015.
Life on earth is more like a
verb. It repairs,
maintains, re-creates, and outdoes itself.
– Lynn Margulis
1
A luminous fox
brown, white, and amber
huddles in our dog’s fur
Night wind summons her
eyes to the moon
where her howls erupt as
music
wilding our domesticity
2
This Oak Bay beach where I
walk
is skin holding my skin
holding foot nerves
that no longer sign their
signals as before
Yet on the night after the
night she died
my small brown dog curled
at my feet at the foot of
the bed
where she had curled before
still sniffing and crooning
She with her wisdom neurons
nosed deep past skin and
bone
to lick the numbness from my
feet
Cell to cell microbial touch
in the mystery of her sweet
black nose
her laving tongue
where she keened at my feet
her sea-riffled song—
song of the empathetic beast
3
My husband and I wade in a
Cariboo Lake
within his dream. A whir, a
break in clouds.
He points skyward, dark
spots, soon a flock,
a troop. Bald eagles ride in
vector-shape
(like geese, but eagles
flocking in a V?).
Circling fierceness makes us
cower like mice.
Two leaders plummet, yet no
talons tear.
Instead their feathery cape of wings wraps round
our heads, our shoulders,
lost in soft embrace,
such gentleness, the strange
largesse of power.
Weeks later Penny
slaughtered by a truck,
daughter’s car totalled, our
house vandalized.
We wonder how this emissary
dream
held precognition,
consolation—awe.
4
In the photo, hunched
at our red canoe’s prow
Penny rides. A red patch
gleams at the back of her
neck
small as a copper penny
then—
soon to grow full span
Young Lake in the Cariboo
where taunting loons
draw from her throat
her own primal yip
Susan McCaslin
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