Looking at this picture with friends this weekend, reminded me just how much of a funny looking dog Bruno was. He was a lovely dog too, even if rather stubborn. I owe him a debt for love shown to me, for love shown to my father. “Love shown” makes it sound like a choice; in truth, dogs are likely more hardwired to love, even if a bit needily. Still, nonetheless, the love is real, which is easily demonstrated by when a dog’s eager love is spurned by us, and then dog goes and lays down in a corner, ears down, with sad, sad eyes.

I have written about Bruno before on this blog here. The poem below continues some of the themes expressed in the first one, in that it echoes the question of whether if the Fall of Mankind had not occurred animals would have been violent. This is not the poem of Bruno’s dying that I wanted to write, which involved more direct echoes of Aslan on the Stone Table, but perhaps that will come later. And it is far from perfect, emphasized by a rather abrupt end. Perhaps, I will work out the kinks of this one some time and also do an Aslan one, in the mean time…

Dog Dying, a Hopeful Sonnet
Dear Bruno, I do not know the answers
Of how it might have been if that First Fruit
Remained unplucked. Would life have surged? The curse
Unheard, would, then, your namesake teeth be moot?
Indeed, would we have come to this sad place
At all? Me muzzling your weakened growl,
Lifting you to this table. Its small space
Bearing the weight of years, of love. A howl,
Like the long, plaintive howls you barked all night
To the pristine, cold moon, barks from from my soul,
Tinged with regret, which only comes with might,
To choose to love, then not. A dog gives all.
But when the New Sun rises in the East.
I’ll be a true Master and you my Beast.

P.S. This sonnet was spurred along by reading the last chapter of The Last Battle by Lewis. It is evident that the man knew and loved dogs. And, oh the entire chapter just makes me ache with longing for heaven and the New Earth.

P.S.S. I cannot definitively say at all that our pooches and other pets will, indeed, be there, though Lewis had a theory that they might be raised by virtue of our shared love and life with them, but it sure would be nice. There are going to be beasties there, right? Might as well start the population with our beasts.