Kick a dog when it’s down and get off
scot-free, rights of passage granted ticket-
of-leave, carte blanche in the blind eye’s white.
That’s the ingredients for thin ice we might
fall through like the child who danced and vanished
under the mirror of the Cam—now
a cautionary tale to remember our own by,
stranger than grades of plastic some recyclers
can’t take. When we lost the old Kelpie
it was almost like the loss of a child,
a member of the family, but the faith-test
insists it can only be ‘almost’. The chemical
impact of loss wears off faster with dogs.
Degrees of grief. Socially acceptable grieving.
Kick a dog when it’s down? Avoid
treading on ice where birds dance?