Button, after a swim in a Gatineau Hills lake

 Missing Her

Life and living is in

constant flux as we move on

from loss, somehow dealing

with the anguish and misery

of an absence in our lives,

a poignant void that

refuses to be absorbed into

regrettable experience.  We

laugh with joy and affection

at the anxious antics and

unalloyed, frantic curiosity

of a neighbour's new puppy,

while later a mourning veil

of depression brings back the

immediacy of a silence where

she once was, a sweet and gentle

reproach as guilt suffuses us

at memory of our vanished

companion.  That old age,

infirmity and loss of physical

sustainability from failed organs

was the means; the method

yet too cruel to bear.