We were standing by the road

.

.

IV.

We were standing by the road,

seven of us and a small boy.

We had just rescued a yellow swallowtail

disabled on the pavement when a car

approached too fast.  I turned to make sure

of the boy, and my old border collie

Nell, too slow coming across,

was hit, broken all to pieces, and died

at once, while the car sped on.

And I cried, not thinking what

I meant, "God damn!" And I wish

all automobiles in Hell,

where perhaps they already are.

.

V.

Nell's small grave, opening

at the garden's edge to receive her

out of this world's sight forever,

reopens many graves.  Digging,

the old man grieves for his old dog

with all the grief he knows,

which seems again to be approaching

enough, though he knows there is more.

.

VI.

How simple to be dead! - the only

simplification there is, in fact, Thoreau

to the contrary notwithstanding.

Nell lay in her grave utterly still

under the falling earth, the world

all astir above, a million leaves

alive in the wind, and what do we know?

.

~ Wendell Berry

(Leavings, Sabbaths, 2005)

.