The latest from Monkey

My name is Woodjerd. 
I am a man and I fish.
I catch candy fish in the jungle.
Would you like one?

Basil, gentle and constant.

I dreamt of her the night after she died and again the night after that.

The day we took her body to the country we saw a coyote on the way there, running in the field beside the road. The fellow looked at us as we drove by. On the way back we saw a raven. We had never seen a coyote or a raven in this place before that day.

John put his ring and a lock of Morgan’s hair in Basil’s mouth before we buried her - so she could find us, he said. She was enshrouded in a blue gingham sheet and settled in the earth under three stones on the hill overlooking the forests and the fields.

That night I dreamt of her, then again the next night. They were nice quiet dreams, no heavy portend or symbolism, just her there and me happy that she was walking and standing in the sun. The second night I told her I knew that in the real world she was dead but that in the dream it was good to see her again.

I have been sitting here mending the sheet where her claws cut a multitude of tiny holes as she struggled to get a purchase in the last weeks. Mending the sheet she died on. I keep wondering if it is morbid to keep it, if I should throw it away, if I should bother mending the many tiny holes. But I have not stopped. 

No one can say she was just a dog. No one can say that any living being could take her place and be what she was.

1997-2010

I love you Baz.