LETTERS FROM HOME: SEEKING SOLACE IN THE MUSIC OF GRACE WHEN NATURE SEEMS UNKIND

Aug. 5, 1999

Dear Patty,

I had let the dogs outside and was lying in bed, floating on a painkiller cloud after a spot of oral surgery, when I suddenly realized that Hank and Lucy were barking frantically. I assumed another dog was outside the fence challenging them because our groundhog hadn't been seen in the backyard since DC filled in its burrow. We knew it had found lodging somewhere nearby because it still came by to nibble the pokeberries growing alongside the fence.

When the barking continued with the same more ferocity I put on some clothes and ran out into the backyard, arriving just in time to see Lucy snag the groundhog's flank and Hank its neck in an instinctive death dance. Lucy pulled and Hank twisted his head from side to side. Knowing better than to grab Hank when he gets that possessed look, I grabbed a stick and swatted their noses hoping to loosen their grips. They hardly flinched. The poor beast had no chance.

The groundhog was dead in less than a minute, though Hank and Lucy still wanted to shake the lifeless body like a rag doll. After some minutes, the stick and I finally persuaded them to return to the house. They were panting heavily, smelled musky, and Hank had blood on his muzzle.

Lucy was the one who pursued the groundhog so determinedly, often climbing down into its burrow, but Hank turned out to be the killer.

Back outside, I began shoveling the dirt out of the burrow DC had filled in. I didn't want DC to see what the dogs she lovingly walks and pampers had done to the groundhog she used to talk to.

The burrow ran deep beside the cottonwood tree next to the fence. I lifted the groundhog's body in its old burrow, may it rest now in peace, put the dirt back on and placed heavy stones on the top so the dogs can't dig the carcass up. As I did so I rued our decision not to trap the groundhog and take it out to the country. We'd been told that putting an animal that has lived in town into the wild is not doing it a favor. And we'd gotten attached to Mr. Groundhog.

DC cried when she learned of the groundhog's death. She is unhappy with God's scheme that allows defenseless animals to be killed. In the car, she swerves to avoid butterflies. She is displeased with Hank and Lucy, too. I reassure her they did only what thousands of years of breeding required them to do. She know and is not consoled.

Buddhists would say this end was the groundhog's karma. I know this will not console DC either. I hold her, kiss her forehead and later read her part of a poem by Gal way Kinnell, "There Are Things I Tell to No One."

1.

There are things I tell to no one.

Those close to me might think

I was sad, and try to comfort me, or become sad themselves.

At such times I go off alone, in silence, as if listening for God.

2.

I say "God"; I believe,

rather, in a music of grace

that we hear, sometimes, playing to us

from the other side of happiness.

When we hear it, when it flows

through our bodies, it lets us live

these days lighted by their vanity

worshiping -- as the other animals do,

who live and die in the spirit

of the end -- that backward-spreading

brightness. And it speaks in notes struck or caressed or blown or plucked off our own bodies: (don't italicize rest of stanza) remember

existence already remembers the flush upon it you will have been,

you who have reached out ahead and taken up some of the black dust

we become, souvenir

which glitters already in the bones of your hand.

(start italics here)

... Then the last cry in the throat

or only dreamed into it

by its threads too wasted to cry

will be but an ardent note

of gratefulness so intense

it disappears into that music

which carries our time on earth away

on the great catafalque

of spine marrowed with god's-flesh...

Love, Sam