Jesse by Monroe and Madeline Pastermack / Monroe & Madeline

JESSE (2001 – 2007)

Oh you know those poems about
loving dogs who die, die before their time is out
die young, still pups, you know
how sentimental and embarrassing
their owners get, remembering…..

You may have heard how Jesse
little Jesse the Rat Terrier loved everybody, how
she’d run up and hug the thighs
of perfect strangers as we
walked down College Avenue
just run up to any likely cooing
stranger, “Cuuute!” was all the cue
she needed…

And she’d accept love
people didn’t even know they had
to give, and give back more, before
astonished, they could cup her satin ears
and walk away, perfect, perfect strangers
looking back, before their day
turned ordinary again, and we

Smugly, we basked in Jesse’s presence
sleeping curved around her little body
on cold nights, scampering after the red slipper
or the TV pillow she would snatch and run away with chasing her down sunlit beaches, splashing
tennis balls into the waves for her.

(Monroe said if there was Elysium, that would be it,
Jesse, a long white beach, and arms that never tire of tossing tennis balls into the waves, for her)
we thought she’d be with us forever.

Strangers became her friends and ours
we accepted all she had to give us
until one day suddenly and imperceptibly
she turned and trotted down a different street
toward that which we cannot yet understand.

I dreamt: Jesse leaping up and free
Jesse, our Jesse, wriggling, joyous, and alive,
hugging a shadowy stranger,
tail spinning joyously.

Our friend Maria, who delivers the mail–
she said, today – as all of us, friends,
and perfect strangers who knew Jesse even as briefly, as we did, can say, and truly, always: “Jesse loved me.”

– Madeline Pastermack.

June 2, 2007

 

We will always remember you,
Jesse
1, June 2007
Monroe and Madeline Pastermack