I read where Mover Mike's dog had died the other day and he had written a poem while involved in his loss. We had a dog named Thurbie a while back. You may be familiar with the works of James Thurber. He was almost blind and did his work up close, very close. He drew a picture of a dog, well almost a dog; that was our Thurbie.
Thurbie was mostly black, low to the ground and he might have had four legs; we were never sure about that. Thurbie looked more like a black rug that moved around and so we just assumed that he had legs. We had him for several years, Thurbie having shown up like most of the others, after finding the hobo's "X" on our front door. We never really knew how old he was, middle aged puppy or there about. When he died he took our hearts away with him. Lucy took him to the vet and he never made it back home. I went to the local garden store, it being spring, and wanted to buy a dogwood tree to plant in the yard. I spotted what I thought was a dogwood tree, and asked the nurseryman about it.
"Oh, that's not a dogwood tree at all. It's actually a variation of the red bud, only with white flowers. Some folks call it a "False Dogwood" because it looks so much like one."
"That's perfect then, I'm planting it to honor a false dog", how much better could it be. So I planted the Thurbie tree in the front yard and each year about this time it comes into bloom, beautiful white flowers that last about a week or so and then blow off to who knows where. The tree has never flourished much, remaining kind of low to the ground, more like a bush than a tree. I suppose its only right since Thurbie was kind of low to the ground too.
