Life – The Bad Dog

You can’t turn your back on it,
you know.

You’ve tended to it, cared for it,
nursed it from vacant bones and
put meat to its flesh, but it doesn’t
know any better, does it?

You won’t be able to make it
understand exactly what time and effort
and love you’ve put into it, or what
hope you have for it, what future
you want for it.

Sure, you can pander to it,
plead with it, prey about it,
but it is not so much deaf as alien,
aware, alive, yet unknowing-
uncaring for our ways.

Unlistening and yet hearing, it
is just another animal, another
guiltless stray that wanders on in step
with us from the moment we take it in
to the feasting scraps of
our final days.

And, worst of all, it will not linger
when our kindly offerings are gone.

No. It will just do as…