There is one grave, that no-one visits, in the pet cemetery at Rowville.
It's cold stone in the winter sun, high clouds, birds' shadows across the lawn.
The inscription reads:
'AN UNNAMED STRAY
PLACED BY
THE LOST DOGS HOME
NORTH MELBOURNE
TO REPRESENT THOSE UNFORTUNATE DOGS
WHO, DAILY, WE MUST SEND FROM THIS
WORLD LOST, ABANDONED, AND REJECTED.'
The plaque was colder than the rock it was embedded in.
A slow crunch of marble & slate beneath the shoe
& always cicadas, who sing in the stillness of a cemetery.
The grave of the unknown stray was set apart from the rest:
the sentimentality of Cobber, Superstar, Hero, Old Bluey,
& Rusty, all deeply missed & mourned,
below the dirty plastic flowers never replaced
& the cameo bordered colour portraits
strangely living in the sun.
Dogs were barking from the boarding kennels in the distance.
I imagined miles upon miles of fields & all that barking
now coming from underground.
Inside, I felt miles upon miles of sunlit nothing.
Who would travel the big freeways in the Australian heat
all the way out to Rowville
to visit a dog that no-one wanted to know?
The plaque rests beneath a remote tree that I cannot name.
No-one looks at it, way out here,
the ants scramble across it.
In the dead heat of noon,
the barking of lost dogs from underground.
We must not send them
from the world
like this.
