Instead of scattering your ashes, let’s go
for another walk across those swaying
fields you’ll sprint half the length of, sun low
as I dawdle your lead, watch you weaving
free through waist high grasses, time blurring
as wind whittles away at limestone edge.
You’ll sniff your way through these fields, village blinking
distant like so much loose change, a hedge
gifting a perspective that the hardedge
look of things might resolve to melt away,
your single bark now echoing a pledge
to live, as dogs will, in this moment, this day.
So much for memory. Below this ancient shelf
You’re still running, still scattering yourself.
Adapted from a poem byBen Wilkinson
