Path

by Vern Fein

It had been years
since I trod
this same neighborhood path
with our dogs,
my visiting son’s dog rabbit-pulling
as we took a family walk
down memory lane.

My voice from the past
leaped into my head:
"Hurry up, Moka; come on, Lola,”
our dogs that died back to back.

“I'm in a hurry, have a meeting,”
so important back then,
impatience pulling at their leash as if dogs
could understand what caused
me to hurry them, take shortcuts,
sometimes not clean up after.

Now they are gone,
the painful, euphemistic sleeps
mixed into the memories of those walks.

We have no dog now,
unable to recover
from the most recent vet trip,
final eyes staring at us.

Memories nip and irritate
like gnats before a storm.
As my family traverses this path
that storm blasts my heart.