in this world I am as rich as I need to be. - Mary Oliver

And it is exceedingly short, his galloping life. Dogs die so soon. I have my stories of that grief, no doubt many of you do also. It is almost a failure of will, a failure of love, to let them grow old — or so it feels. We would do anything to keep them with us, and to keep them young. The one gift we cannot give.

Still, what I want in my life
is to be willing
to be dazzled — to cast aside the weight of facts

and maybe even
to float a little
above this difficult world.
I want to believe I am looking

into the white fire of a great mystery.
I want to believe that the imperfections are nothing — that the light is everything — that it is more than the sum
of each flawed blossom rising and falling. And I do.

I tell you this to break your heart, by which I mean only that it break open and never close again to the rest of the world.