Animals: Two Poems by Ricky Ray

The Last Walk

for Addie

Let the moths meet my hand 
when they swarm into the beam of my headlamp.
Or let them find a brief moment of illumination 
and swerve away.
Let it become winter, Addie’s favorite season, 
twelve degrees, her favorite temp.
Let us be ankle-deep in snow.
Let the Earth be hard to dig 
when Addie’s body feels 
cold as the loss gnarling my hands.
Let me lay on the mound above her 
and wish for rain, for thaw. 
Let the rain come a second too late.
Let each drop be a miracle 
that drowned and came back.
Let it smell like dirty lake water 
that swam and dried in Addie's fur.
Let me close my eyes and relive 
the sound of her sitting beside me, 
in the car after adoption, 
in Central Park after chasing horses, 
at Eureka Lake where it all became clear: 
two quick pants and a pause, 
two quick pants and the fat thunk of her paw,
two quick pants and five pianissimo sniffs 
that parse the braided news of the air.
Let it hurt. 
Let the thought of her hurt. 
Let it hurt to breathe, to swallow, to exist. 
Let it hurt to feel cold dirt 
when I forget she’s gone 
and reach out to pet her in the dark.
Let the rain wash the tears from my face 
and give the Earth back her salt.
Let me ask the Earth for Addie. 
Let me beg the Earth for Addie.
Let me demand that the Earth take me 
and give Addie what’s left of my life.
Let the Earth sigh and sing to me. 
Let me tell her to shut up.

And then, let Addie say: papa, 
it's okay, the Earth is good to me,
it's her turn now, 
you can take my leash from your wrist, 
you can give my treats to the kitties, 
you can eat a few yourself,
you can give my meds to the shelter, 
you can tell the world how much you loved me,
you can speak no words for months, 
you can walk our walks 
until they feel like the shape of your existence, 
and you can stand every day at the edge of the forest 
where your legs won't carry you any further
and you can watch me walk ahead
and you can cry and you can smile, 
and you can fall to your knees 
when I turn around to look at you, 
wagging my tail and waiting for you to join me,
and you can break in half 
when those five eternal minutes conclude
and I turn again to follow the trail 
and the scent of the truth that calls me onward,
and you can cry and you can smile 
and you can shake and wave goodbye
and you can shout 
"I love you Addie! I love you Addie!"
until there's nothing but the trail 
and the sound of your love 
and the sight of my footprints glowing in the snow
and you can reach out 
and place one hand across the divide into my pawprint
and you can feel how well I am 
and you cry and you can smile
and you can howl until your voice gives out
and you can let yourself
let me go.

Walk with Addie: Great Hollow

Addie rushed to one of her favorite summer watering holes, 
a low stream under a grey bridge with hip-high pockets 
of relief, favorite because she knows the taste of it, the cool,
the easy entrance, the slow flow, the way the water says 
come into me and let me carry half your cares.

She swam her three circles and drank with relish, paddled 
and waded, crested and raised her nose to divine who else 
was upstream today. Asked for a treat which I gave her,
one in tens of thousands, every one of which buoys me 
as much as it does her, then she coughed, and she seized,

and she fell over into the water, fully submerged, and I bent 
as fast as my broken body would bend, scared at the thought 
of her drowning, of pneumonia, of this being her last swim. 
I lifted her from the water and held her to me, and she righted 
like a ship that had just endured a brief and terrible storm.

The shaking quelled, and the sun kept pouring into us,
and the river jingled, and my heart fell down out of my throat 
into my chest, where Addie already was, blinking, waiting for me 
to join her. She coughed once more, then she resumed her sniff, 
eyeing my hand with the hunger that says not yet, papa, not yet.

About Ricky Ray

Ricky Ray is a disabled poet, essayist and eco-mystic who lives with his wife and his old brown dog in the old green hills of the Hudson Valley. He is the author of Fealty (Diode Editions); Quiet, Grit, Glory (Broken Sleep Books); and The Sound of the Earth Singing to Herself (Fly on the Wall Press), a finalist for The Laurel Prize. He was educated at Columbia University and the Bennington Writing Seminars, and he lectures on poetry, animism and integral ecology. His awards include a Ron McFarland Poetry Prize, a Whisper River Poetry Prize, a Liam Rector Fellowship and a Zoeglossia Fellowship, and his writing appears widely in periodicals and anthologies, including Waxwing, Salamander, The American Scholar and The Moth.