An Ode to a Stray Dog

Hurt... an emptiness
once filled by a faithful dog...
now is left unfilled.

Gone is he, that stray!
I say to my thoughts... come back.
As if to comfort...

As faithful a friend
was he! There, present for me -
gifts unexpected.

He stayed for a while
that brown, battered, scruffy dog -
toughened, old and wise.

As he came left he...
came he uninvited yet loved...
and loved he is still.

Thanks, Tootsie - 
sleep and rest.
---<--@


dis hound, I love (not a picture of Tootsie)

The Alone

Staring the darkness...
the depths of "the alone"
staring back at me.

Feeling the distance...
the impending loneliness -
I turn back to You.

To You, LORD -
The Alone.
---<--@

There are two kinds of solitude. Only one is real.

Reflection:

There are times when one feels incredibly lonely and I believe those are the times it is good to have a strong sense of solitude.

Because to me, a sense of solitude is not a sense of being alone.

Just as a tree is not alone in a forest of trees, a soul that realizes that it is a soul realizing it is a soul is a soul with a spirit of solitude - who - in knowing it stands alone have likewise found it can never be alone.

Fact is, it is in rote similarity that one feels most lonely.

For it is not in the richness of our diversity that the fear of the "other" flourish but in the seasonless existence wrought by the cowardice of an unthinking mind.