Featured Poem: The Bowl We Drink From

By Pam Atherstone
Modesto Branch

Do not pity them.
Those who walk slowly in the morning field
with the empty leash in their pocket,
or the one whose house
still holds a bowl on the floor
as if the earth itself might grow thirsty.

You think they are trapped in a cycle of madness.
Architects of grief,
builders of small lives
measured in twelve bright years
and one dark winter.
But you are mistaken.

They are the brave ones,
the keepers of the fire of devotion.
They know from the beginning
how the story ends.
How the silver thread
that binds breath to body
will one day loosen in the quiet afternoon,
or beneath the dim lamp of a vet’s room
where the air smells of alcohol and kindness.

They know a silence will enter the house
wide as an ocean.
And still, they open the door again.
Somewhere a dog is waiting
in a metal cage,
or a muddy yard,
or in the deep meadow of the not-yet-met.

They go out like pilgrims.
They return carrying
another warm shadow,
another beating lantern of joy
with ears like small flags
announcing the kingdom of Now.

For ten, twelve years
they kneel in the temple of ordinary days,
walking the same paths,
throwing the same stick
into the golden grass of afternoon.
They learn devotion the way rivers learn the sea.
Then the breaking comes.

Yes, the heart splits open
like a fallen tree struck by lightning.
But look closely.
Inside that wound, there is light,
and running through it
the bright footprints
of every creature who ever loved them back.

These people understand that sacrifice is the medicine
they gladly surrender to every decade.
They allow their hearts to be shattered
to ensure a dozen good dogs get a taste of Heaven.
It is a sacred trade,
for grief is the tax paid for the purest love in the Universe.

It’s a secret the desert cannot teach:
that safety is a lonely country,
and the soul was not made
for drought.
So, they drink again
from the same deep bowl of
grief, joy, grief, joy
as the earth itself drinks rain.