Peanut Poem by Frank Avon

'He's just a dog, '
I say to myself.
'That name! '
I say to myself,
the name he came with
when we adopted him;
'That wagging tail, '
I say to myself,
'he knows how
to get what he wants.'
'He's just a dog, '
I say to myself,
and he is.

Nevertheless,
I hold him in my arms
as if he were a child,
I clasp him to my chest,
I caress his rib cage,
scratch his tummy,
rub my fingers
behind his ears,
actually let him
lick my nose (? !) ,
press his cheeks
tight against mine.

When we walk,
he chooses the way we go,
but, patiently, his pace,
to mine he slows.

He's still our puppy,
yet he's seven years old,
middle-aged in dog years,
and I am seventy-seven,
well-advanced in mine,
already seven beyond
my allotted three-score-and-ten.

One of us
will survive the other:
that's just the way it is.
The one I grieve for now
is the one who will survive.

'He's just a dog, '
I say to myself,
and indeed he is,
just like the ones
who preceded him
in my lifetime:
Shoestring, Pfandy,
Tennessee, Buttons,
good ole Max,
our grand-dog,
company for our son
when he was alone.
All gone.

When I caress Peanut,
I'm caressing all of them.
'That's just the way it is.'

All of life, Somerset said,
is a Persian carpet:
'the weaver elaborated
his pattern...so
might a man live his life
...look at his life,
that it made a pattern.'

That one little straggle
of brown and black,
just so many short threads
in one large carpet,
among the thousands of carpets
woven and cherished,
woven and forgotten,
all of them together
just one infinitesimal
fragment - many but finite,
in the Finite Universe,
itself one straggle of thread
in the Eye of Infinity,

but that little straggle
is a part of the pattern,
that I might name Beauty,
that I might call Love.