Day eight: Happy 5th birthday, Bestia!

My furry companion turns five today, which is also how long I have been living in Italy. 

Challenge 8: “Write poems in which mysterious and magical things occur.”

I’m starting to feel the reality of the fact that prior to embracing this month-long challenge I had written fewer poems in total than April has days.

Here is one of my vertical accounts, but the magic is real.

The best kind of magic

Imagine:
a child wants a dog.

She calculates that in the year 2000
she will be thirty. Terrible.

Don’t trust anybody over.

What she doesn’t know is
that she will celebrate it
with her first dog.

Nobody could see it coming,
that litter.
Ten land in the trash
of her parents
as if by magic.

They raise three
by the bottle
and keep the
whitest
fluffiest
introvert
with healthiest appetite.

He grows up into a retriever
and lives to be 13.
The happiest years of the family.

But that was then,
before she moved.

The day before
you arrive
to turn them into a pack of three
she still doesn’t know
what you look like.

Amore mentions
a Maremma sheepdog,
a huge white beast.

But that is only one half
of your mother’s gene pool.
The father was a bastard
because he ran away,
amore says.

She doesn’t mind either way.
You are coming
and whatever comes
she knows they will love you.

And then amore brings you
through the gate and sets you down.

You are two months old
but you are already
a ready-made dog.

It is hard to trick you
surprise you
outsmart you.

You often give her the
“come on, really?”
look.

You grow
you travel
you smarten
you harden
you learn that they wish you well
and decide to obey
and today you are five.

You are the best companion
a woman in Maremma
surrounded by “fattorie”
– which aren’t factories
but farms –
could hope to have.

And dogs are closest to a proof
that magic is real.

A happy couple.

And then – ta-daaaaam! Hair… barking… breaking balls… scratching furniture… sleeping on every bed… jumping on people from joy… barking viciously at (almost) every male dog… etc. And yet – magic!

Here is the past year with a photo from each month, as is my habit, so that I’ll have a photo from each month of your life.

The four previous birthday posts are linked to below the gallery.

Happy birthday, Bestia called Fonzie! ❤

April: This is how the inside of our car looks like. To Civitavecchia with visiting sis.

May: In flowers.

June: Highly cultured traveller in the company of new friends in Orvieto. (Hi, Liz!)

July: A nap with dad after a joint stroll in Piran.

August: Waiting in Lokev with mom unaware.

September: “Hi! Will you eat all of those beasties?” A visit in Rome.

October: Happy.

November: On the beach with a sudden visitor.

December: Back to Slovenia: Lake Podpeč in gloomy weather.

January: Finally a calm and quiet New Year’s Eve at home.

February: And then snow!! First in five years here.

March: The pose. “Aaaah, that’s life.”

1st birthday
2nd birthday
3rd birthday
4th birthday