Lost Dog

Owner - LOST! Rickets is a much loved Alsatian who went missing on Thursday 15th June whilst on a walk in the South Downs. If anybody sees her please call us immediately on (tel no)

PHOTO

Dog - I hear you calling but I’m not coming.

Owner - RICKETS RIIIICKETSSSS!!

Dog - These words are just a beat, a background hiss in my present utopia. I have found myself, and I am no longer yours. Call all you like, I am not coming.

Owner - RICKETS RIIIICKETSSSS RICKETS!!

Dog - I’m searching for a smell I once smelt long ago, a scent so sweet it wafted on a breeze of lilac and honey. I thought I found it, but it was only a wet towel, wafting in the wind.

Owner - RICKETS, HERE RICKETS! (and a whistle as shrill as scream)

Dog - Here I am, searching and all you can do is scream. Do not call me back, not when I have got this far, when I have at least identified the fact that I am looking, or that looking is what I do. Contentment lies on a distant smell, brought to me from afar, delivered to me across an ocean on a tradewind. I know it is somewhere.

Owner - RICKETS!!! RICKETS RIIIICKETSSSS!!! OH RIIIICKETSSSS!!

Dog - Dum dum dumb. Ah yes here, over here, next to this box, around the back, through the wood in the den up a ladder, by the stream. A sound, as big as a jumbo jet. Yet shy, ashamed of its passion, bewitched and hollow. I’m looking for something, the thing that is not here.

Dog - and if I find it?

Owner - Rickets?

Dog - I will look elsewhere! If I find it then it can’t possibly be the right one. I belong in the right one and if I find it it can only be wrong. Searching is what I do, arriving is a misfortune.