My Dog Tulip Page #7

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as I mopped it all up.

I was thinking

how sadly bedraggled and thin

she had appeared

in the brief glimpse

I had of her.

The bucket and flour sack

were fated not to be used

as first intended.

Though looking back now

over the years,

it might have been better

if it had been.

And as I watched upon my terrace

the unfolding of these

affectionate, helpless lives,

I hoped to put the creatures

out among adult, educated,

and prosperous people,

but my hopes were not realized.

My landlord, understandably,

had told me to get my animals or

myself out of the place at once.

The puppies went one by one

to whomsoever would take them.

How well did I do for them?

I did in the end

what I'd meant not to do.

I'd cast them to fortune.

I had flown too high.

Health and happiness

cannot be secured.

And the only way to avoid

the onus of responsibility

for the lives of animals

is never to traffic in them

at all.

I gave one puppy

to a shopkeeper friend

who offered to find him a home.

He was sold over the counter...

to whom, I never discovered.

What happened to him?

I don't know.

The owner of one said

it had been too difficult

to house-train.

The owner of another, a laborer,

and the last, a drinker,

spun a long story to account

for its disappearance.

The impulse to follow up their

small destinies soon weakened.

Hmm. Better not to know.

Whatever blunders

I may have committed

in my management

of my animal's life,

she lived on

to the great age of 161/2.

I was a bit drained in spirit

when Tulip came into my hands.

And the 15 years

she lived with me

turned into the happiest

of my life.

She entered my life

when I was quite over 50,

and she entirely transformed it.

She offered me what I had never

found in my life with humans...

constant, single-hearted,

incorruptible,

uncritical devotion,

which is in the nature

of dogs to offer.

She placed herself

entirely under my control.

Looking at her sometimes

in her later years,

I used to think

that the ideal friend...

whom I no longer wanted,

perhaps never wanted...

would have had the mind

of my Tulip,

always at one's service

through the devotion

of a faithful

and uncritical beast.

Are not all human contacts

based upon one person's wish

to claim the affairs of another?

Everyone, it seems,

wishes everyone else

different from what they are.

Nancy:
Joe!

Joe!

Joe!

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