4 A good life

Death in the country is I suppose
somewhere on the psychotic scale.
The old farm dog when he dies is
sobbed for and mourned and buried with a stone
marker and the stories about him grow
to legendary while the calf you saved by
bottle feeding 10 times a day gets sent to slaughter
and eaten through a long cold winter

and both animals had good lives, that’s how you learn
to understand it, having had a good life,

though one was much much shorter and ended
in a planned and choreographed murder
and dismemberment.

Stay practical. Everything has its
purpose and purpose matters more than
time. Wasteful stupid waste to
outlive your purpose.

The purpose of a calf is to be beef.
The purpose of a dog is to be guard
and companion.
The purpose of a truck is to run.

Purpose over? Time to go. No sense
being sentimental over what by its
nature is finished.

But half the barns round this way
hold an old rusting truck. No sense
in being sentimental.