my sweet sixteen

she came up beside me as I knelt on the floor hand-vacuuming her

sleeping pad and I looked to my right and there was her beautiful face

six inches from mine with her smile beaming and even moreso in her eyes

looking at me, and in a deep soul-stirring earth-moving kind of moment

aha I realized my fresh-born puppy was now not only as old as would be

my great-grandmother but that she now embodies and personifies the

wisdom and compassion and trust, and intimacy, that can only be

acquired through a lifetime of closeness and challenges, of adventures

and lazy sleepy afternoons, of scary threatening moments and

exhilarating play, through the death of loved ones and thrill of new

friends, and that she was with awareness and with her presence making

all those things available to me, all of her lifetime of devotion and

experience, in the form of love, love for life and love for her dear

friend and loyal pack member, and that if I would see her this way,

realize her uniqueness, my own uniqueness, and that of our partnership,

and understand life this way – that life is conscious and casual and

cosmic and earthy all at the same time, and infinitely deep with the

joys of the moment, and that we have all this time given to us and that

we deserve to see it and feel it fully as it exists and not in some

stereotyped conception of pet or owner or number of legs or color, or

season or fortune, that there is just now, only now, as we are – well,

just try it, she seemed to say just by being here, being here with me.

my sweet sixteen

Larry Piltz
(for Star)
April 23, 2008

Indian Cove / Austin, Texas