"Hey Mister! That's a bush dog you got there!"Ĭautious and bush, her great heart ruled her fear. The lounging Gwitchen on Main Street shouted to me, On leash she skittered along the streets of Whitehorse. She ate ice cream cones at the Dairy Queen in Whitehorseīiting only when she had lapped it down to the cone. I was her chauffeur, one of the amenities. Tonya was Queen, her love was always demanding. She was as given to me as she was to her work,īut her love was proud, it never was humble nor abject. Proud though she was, Tonya loved me - in her way. She was proud, smug, one might even say conceited. In her working life she was always the leader,Ĭompletely given to her work as a leader of teams. The truth is, Tonya was never only a dog. Or make that four, since my subject is a dog. Maybe I'll get a more sympathetic hearingīecause I'm starting with three strikes against me, I'm not trying to pull a literary fast one. I have nothing to hide so I say these things up front Lamentation and sorrow at the subject's death Ĭonsolation and transcendence over grief and loss.Ī postmodern elegy is a dubious undertaking. Traditionally an elegy has three parts, phases or elements: This is an elegy, a poem in memory of one departed. When I go someplace in the big green Dodge four-wheel-drive pickup truck I beg her to stay with me, not to fade away. I talk to Tonya, sing her special little song to her. This is neither comfortable nor convenient I have worn her purple collar around my right bicepĬontinuously night and day since she died. Her life lasted fifteen years, nine months and one day. To palliate, sidestep, avoid or deny this simple truth: I do not want to use fancy words, meter or rhyme
These bones that remain must be truth itself, I put aside the comfortable overcoat of religion. I can have no doubt that my companion of fifteen years I did these things my memory is quite clear. "I dug her grave, laid her body in the damp earth." I can be reached at this address: jjeffrey(at). Writing it has been a learning experience and I am eager to share the perspective of the reader. I invite commentary and critique via e-mail from serious readers of this work. I have also illustrated this long poem with photographs, both for visual relief on the web page and to avail myself just a little of the web's multimedia potential.
Hence these parts of the elegy vary considerably in prosody from the rest. In these I have tried as best I can to emulate but not to parody the style of the poet in question. In the work are included several tributes to American and English poets of the past who have written elegies or whose work deals in some way with death and our reaction to it. If the language is at times clumsy and plain, that is because my overriding objective is truth, if necessary at the expense of stylistic considerations. It is all still subject to minor ongoing editing by the author. I had never before attempted a poem of this scope. Note to the reader: This is an elegy in the tradition of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "In Memoriam A.H.H.", it was written over an extended period of time and with quite broad terms of reference.
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