BLACK

Black is what I most remember
about Khan: blackness and all the wild
goose chases he loved to lead me on. I've never walked
the bleak vastness of the moor since then. Black,
not of moonless skies, but a greyish,
almost mongrel black that belied his illustrious
pedigree and made him appear unexceptional
to the untrained eye that might skim over him without the slightest interest
in the mud-encrusted dreadlocks that swamped
his delicate features, nor in the flashes of deep auburn
that framed those soft brown eyes.

I remember him, the most stubborn, mischievous Afghan Hound that ever lived -
the only dog I ever truly called friend - almost as tall as me,
his long legs outrunning mine,
in fact running rings around me at every turn:
bolting off into the distance, impervious to my frantic calls
and genuine fear that I'd never see him again.
Oh how he delighted in trying my patience! Slipping his collar
was a favourite trick, and throwing himself into the river -
just, I swear, to compound the state of his coat and bring double trouble down upon me.
Truly, he could run like the wind when he wanted,
could easily have outrun any prize-winning racehorse.

So many times I'd cling onto his lead with dogged determination,
only for him to pull me along, face down in the mud,
a wicked glint in his eye. Then he'd slip his collar
and take to the hills like a thing demented, hill sheep
darting off in terror at the sight of that
demonic-like black lightening that streaked through their midst.
He left me feeling so useless: a dog owner, owning
what? Those feet, I believed, weren't even under his control.
They appeared to possess a will of their own, and certainly were my Nemesis.

Then, finally, one of these escapades proved to be his undoing.
A car is much less yielding than an ineffectual mistress.
My heart was shattered by the sickening BANG
that sent him spinning into stillness
in an horrific kaleidoscope
of sodden reddish black.