To Stark on a rough day

Stark, I'm watching an ant nimbly explore the crevices and hills of a pillow
and I wish I could merge you with it. So you could walk easy again.
Your black head on the ant's black body - smiling, crawling up walls and over hills.
A quarter of every year now centered around canine palliative care
Sandy, Molly, Stark
Dogs face death without fear
But they are scared to be ostracized from the pack
But that's where we want to place the dying, the incontinent, the inconvenient
We are overtired, my joints sore from carrying Stark on each movement
His joints must be twice as sore
He does not want to be a burden, the look of self-guilt and shame his face can express
So we sit down together and I comb his black fur, now tinged with white from age
like my own

Stark - like Pandora - you were more human than dog in your own mind.
Human emotions were your great joy and fear.
But I want to say to you that you greatest gift to me
is that you are the most huggable dog I have known
Big guys needs a big dog to hug without
feeling childish or making the dog child-like
An arm around you is around a black bear
Strong, prideful, vigilant
attuned to smallest shift in emotion
a voice that could bellow and howl and mournful
like no other dog I have known

The dead haunt us but lightly compared to the dying
Yet we can hug the dying and they can hug back
And in these small mercies
we pass these somber joyful days
as living creatures together
on this overcast day

Beautifully written. If it wasn't for you guys, I would never have been able to accept a dog into my own world, and now I can't imagine sam not in it.