The Duke of Glenn’s Creek

It has now been two years since we first moved to Florida. It was a bittersweet move, considering that my giant, 200-pound English Mastiff, Duke of Glenn’s Creek (Duke) passed away in the hours right after we closed on our new beach house. He had been eleven-and-a-half years old – according to the vet, the oldest Mastiff he had ever met – and his stomach spontaneously flipped. It was one of the saddest days of my life.

Duke was not just a dog. He was an institution. He was the size of a cow, and you could not walk him down the street without attracting a crowd. I can still remember the day we drove him home from a breeder in Indiana, and I would carry him around and listen to the sweet puppy sounds he would make in my ear. In many ways, he was my first baby. I miss him so much, every single day.

Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.
My big dog sang with me so purely,
puckering her ruffled lips into an O,
beginning with small, swallowing sounds
like Coltrane musing, then rising to power
and resonance, gulping air to continue—
her passion and sense of flawless form—
singing not with me, but for the art of dogs.
We joined in many fine songs—”Stardust,”
“Naima,” “The Trout,” “My Rosary,” “Perdido.”
She was a great master and died young,
leaving me with unrelieved grief,
her talents known to only a few.

Now I have a small dog who does not sing,
but listens with discernment, requiring
skill and spirit in my falsetto voice.
I sing her name and words of love
andante, con brio, vivace, adagio.
Sometimes she is so moved she turns
to place a paw across her snout,
closes her eyes, sighing like a girl
I held and danced with years ago.

But I am a pretender to dog music.
The true strains rise only from
the rich, red chambers of a canine heart,
these melodies best when the moon is up,
listeners and singers together or
apart, beyond friendship and anger,
far from any human imposter—
ballads of long nights lifting
to starlight, songs of bones, turds,
conquests, hunts, smells, rankings,
things settled long before our birth.

“Dog Music,” Paul Zimmer

I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There’s nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began—
I loved my friend.

“Poem,” Langston Hughes