Cash, at the cottage a week before we had to put him down. He was very sick at the time. Still, he lived life to the fullest. The title of the poem is based on the humorous pleasure he took in chasing a moving spot from a flashlight.

Chasing Light
As above, so below
Nostrils shoveling snow
Or like the prow
Of a wooly, golden boat
Cutting waves
Through a lake
Mottled in the flow
The sun in orbit
Round the narrows
And wouldn’t you know
Head askew
At the note of a frog
A burp on the spit
Amid summer’s warm
shadows
Laughter and tears,
don’t you just wish
you had his ears?
Crazy in love
With the scent of cedar
He sports and rolls
And finds his way
To the source
Ever the same
A playful game
A treat tumbling
In the bright blue frame
Of Niki’s skies
and Peter’s eyes
Amid toppled trees
And troubling fleas
He goes and goes
Always following
That tickling thing
Sparkling cold,
simply amazing
Sensing whole worlds
Of ducks and loons
Webbed feet too itching
To leap and swim
If not for a stick
Then at least on a whim
Stubborn, spot lit
In the Alician night
Huffing over
Drink, fire and fumes
What is it with
Human beings and
mushrooms?
Between tire tracks
On dusty roads
Rife with clover
He sniffs the air
Overwhelmed in a swoon
Dressed in mist
The faraway pond
Still as heaven
Beckons and kisses him
Thinking
he’s an orange moon

II
Onward then, lout
Take this runabout
Past Blueberry Hill
Beyond Little Gull
And the queue of
Parisian girls
Giggling at your blanched
Lumbering visage
Sodden and terrorized
By Wolf spiders below deck
You’d think the man
Was stung in
the neck
Onward, onward, fool
Or I just might bite
Once more to the cottage
At last to chase light

Robert McDougall, July 2008

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