Jeremy

A street dog living on a ledge
With waste ground all about
Clearly something impacted him
There just could be no doubt
He was so in the worse for wear
Literally torn apart
His left front leg was hanging
By loose skin
And his broken heart
Was evident his agony
Was for everyone to see
How he managed every day
So defeated tragically

He was wrapped up in a blanket
And taken back to where
His healing just had to begin
His injuries unfair
So much pain and again
So must have strife and stress
How he had kept it all together
For he was in, such a mess
maintaining that vital force
To function everyday
To not give up to death
His spirit underway
human kind had ignored him
His plight was his and he
Realised his frailty
And coped reluctantly

Adversity was his by now
Anguish all the way
Any movement he reminded
With torment so each day
Hiding in his own space
His silence and his smell
No one heard his cries of pain
Or shared his hours of hell
The Poet contemplating
Jeremy today
Is finding all this difficult
Tears come and display
So much woe apparent
So much real discord
For This emaciated fellow
There just was no reward

We doused him cleaned him
Loved him motionless he lay
Gave him medicine for his soul
We sedated him to pay
Respects to all his agony
His teeth punctured his lip
Clearly in the impact
All his mouth was ripped
He was bleeding he was drooling
He was tearful clearly sad
His ribs were poking through his side
Everything to add
To how he felt and what he felt
Existing, let us say
In his filthy lonely bubble
Every single day

His front left leg was terrible
The bones was just smashed through
We had to amputate his leg
There was nothing we could do
The other three were torn as well
They must have felt so sore
He looked as though
He really had come through a Great War
All his wounds were treated
And bandaged, we loved him and
We caressed him every day
Weeks passed he was still
His will was crazy
His spirit lost completely
A great chill
Seemingly had quietened him
Oblivious to so much now around
His healing took a long time
I suppose really it had to
Getting back to norm
Was a long climb

The angels all around
Were good and loving
His battle was ongoing after all
We tried so many ways to cheer his spirit
To break into his blankness
And to call
He would hide and be alone
For many weeks he stayed
By himself rebuilding
Clearly he had weighed
Up inside his being
All the ills and pain
He had no way to affirm his thought
And express himself again

We introduced some puppy dogs
With Their playful innocence they
Didn’t seem to reach him either
He was broken one could say
But he was surely healing
Externally he knew
Walking on three legs
He could if he wanted to
And then one day we noticed
His tail it wagged and he
Had come out of his bouts
Of total melancholy
His eyes flashed with excitement
His tail wagged round and round
He played and he responded
His feet back on the ground

He was peppery and zingy
Somehow so inspired
He ran about and cuddled up
As if he had been rewired
With all our love over the weeks
Responding lovingly
Get-up-and-go and too and fro
He had found his gravity