A borzoi breeder I know shared this poem on Facebook this week. I thought I would place it here for my readers to find. It says so much so well.
I had no thought of violets of late,
The wild, shy kind that spring beneath your feet
In wistful April days, when lovers mate
And wander through the fields in raptures sweet.
The thought of violets meant florists’ shops,
And bows and pins, and perfumed papers fine;
And garish lights, and mincing little fops
And cabarets and songs, and deadening wine.
So far from sweet real things my thoughts had strayed,
I had forgot wide fields, and clear brown streams;
The perfect loveliness that God has made,—
Wild violets shy and Heaven-mounting dreams.
And now—unwittingly, you’ve made me dream
Of violets, and my soul’s forgotten gleam.
~Alice Dunbar
This is all so true of the shallow life I live without thinking until I remember what lies just beyond my back door, in the nearest field. There abounding are every kind of “violet” and wild flower one may seek, only a step or two away off the rocky and inclining, twisting trail.
And while I am at it, let me add another I found on my own once:
Life is for the living
Death is for the dead
Let life be like music
And death a note unsaid.
~ Langston Hughes
Perhaps if death is a “note unsaid”, then death will never be. I can say it over and over like a mantra so my borzoi Tresor and Jelly will never die.