While Walking My Dog’s Ghost
I spot a baby rabbit
lying still in a clump of grass
no wider than my hand.
It quivers, but I pretend
not to have seen, for fear
that the dog, ghost or not,
will frighten and chase it
into the brush, beyond
its mother’s range,
perhaps to become lost
and thirsty, malnourished,
filthy, desperate, much
like the dog when we
found each other that hot,
dry evening so long ago.
This first appeared here in September 2016.
O at the Edges 
You got me at walking my dog’s ghost. What an introduction.
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Thank you, Linda. It’s hard not to feel his presence on some walks…
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I think we all walk with ghosts at times. But you’ve put it into words for us. (K)
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My ghost are always present.
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Mine like to play hide and seek. Of course then they show up when you aren’t looking…
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Mine do this too, but I know they’re always there, lurking.
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They do lurk.
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some companions never leave us, I think ❤ a beautiful piece!
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Thank you, Sarah.
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I join in praising the capture of that title and it’s flow into the first line. My long-time musical partner had to euthanize his dog of 12 years this month, so I was particularly ready for this one.
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Thank you, Frank. I mourn all of life’s dogs.
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A beautiful evocation.
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Dogs inspire me, Stuart. Thank you.
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Ah, an Okaji poem of sensibility — sweet and simple in sentiment, crisp and precise in expression. Cp. one of the founders of the 18th-century Cult of Sensibility, Thomas Gray, on the death of a favourite cat: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44302/ode-on-the-death-of-a-favourite-cat-drowned-in-a-tub-of-goldfishes
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Beware those unlawful prizes!
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Fabulous post
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Thanks very much!
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