Cisco

Must I learn the hard way? A valid question, perhaps —
if there is a choice, and if it comes to that.
But the gentle road is oft-mistaken — like an autumn breeze,
or an old gray cat that’s lost its teeth, and can’t fight back.
Am I on it now? Is there worse to come?
I no longer ask. I carry on.

I remember the night Cisco died. I was sitting with my parents and enjoying a root beer float when a fellow named Jack Day stopped by and tapped on our door. He’d come to tell us our dog had been hit and killed on the road a few hundred feet east of where we lived. None of us were surprised, because Cisco chased every car and truck that drove by. It was a habit he’d learned from Butch, the collie we had when Cisco was a puppy. Butch died the same way. And so I took the news in stride. I finished my root beer float. I brushed my teeth. I went to bed and cried.

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