The last two poems in the collection are about animals, and particularly, in one aspect or another, about dogs. My German Shepherd, Elsa, is the subject of the first of these. It might seem somewhat eccentric—writing a poem about one's dog, that is, however, if you knew what Elsa and I had been through you would maybe not regard it as total literary folly.

Fourteen years we were together, through the Orange County days, the sojourn in Santa Cruz, the struggles with Food Not Bombs, and, most incipiently of all, the amazing taking to the airwaves of San Francisco Liberation Radio. A co-founder of that station is what she was, and even in the years afterward, as she grew older, she would lay serenely on her couch greeting our in-studio guests each day.

By the time I wrote the poem, on January 16, 1999, however, she had become old and sick. I recall her lying next to me that morning, her sonorous breathing carrying just a barely audible note of distress as I scribbled down the verses. It took no prophetic talent to predict the outcome. Even so the end came quicker than I anticipated. On January 29, I was forced, out of consideration for her immense pain, to take her to the vet and put her to sleep.

And so the dog "up and died" and like the character in the popular song, I still grieve. The poem, though written when she was still alive, is a tribute to her memory. That, at any rate, is how I regard it now...

The Sound of Elsa's Breathing:
Poem for a German Shepherd

How much longer will your chest continue to rise
And fall when you lay on your side, your eyes
In REM sleep, unseeing, narrow seams,
Behind which your brain, like mine, maps its dreams?

Lulled to slumber by that sound so often I've been,
Or merely infused with contentment and peace within.
It is my mantra, my Omm, my Buddhist prayer—
Moving in and out of your sleeping lungs, that air.

Years ago—my God—quite something you were!
Beautiful, strong, fleet of foot, astir
With life, proud Shepherd, you put them all to shame,
You and I linked by illness, together in pain.

Yet you vouchsafed me perfection, quite apparent to see,
It was, stargazer, you had eyes only for me.
Would that I really were a god, dear girl so true,
For a god would never have allowed this to happen to you.

You got old while I (at least to a degree)
Stayed young, and that's what saddens me, you see.
Tiredly on our walks in the Golden Gate fog,
You're much slower now, broken down old dog.

That day approaches when I no longer will hear
That heavenly sound which has stabilized me for years.
Alas time has done its famous number on your,
But to tell the truth, I feel, it's done one on me too.

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