Domino's Death and the Ultimate Reality

It seems there are two realities.
One you can see and comment on.
The other is less tangible, harder to explain,
but in some ways more palpable.
It's timeless, eternal, and always waiting.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's talk about
the first one as it stands right now:

He is dead.
My beloved Appaloosa gelding is dead.
He's lying in the pasture, stiff and bloating,
under a bright blue tarp. 
And soon, Kenneth is coming with his backhoe
and he'll be lying deep beneath a mound of packed
red dirt.

And I'll never again get to kiss him or hug him
or hear his deep soft nicker trusting me to know
what it meant and what he wanted,

and when I look out the window I'll never again see
his unique and beautiful body, standing below the shed,
waiting for the rising sun to warm him, or see his glowing
whiteness in the moonlight, while the others are cloaked 
in darkness and shadows.

And I wonder how my life will be without him to share the
seasons - the changing light and adjusting our chores due to
all kinds of weather.

He was my rock. And I was his.

And of course there are feelings of all kinds:
deep wailing sadness, shock, and anger and resistance
to the way life is. 

But sometimes after, or within, or between the waves 
of grief and fits of resistance, something strange and
wonderful happens that's hard to describe:

It's a bit like falling.
Like a cliff-dwelling bird who just lets go
and falls into something vast and empty that
was always waiting - a bright, white
freedom, and in my case

buoyed by love and Thank you, Thank you,
Thank you's filling the air. Coming from Domino?
Coming from me? Or from a band of heavenly horse
angels who I've loved and cared for and had mercifully
put down.

But it doesn't matter really, because in this reality
we're all the same.

Standing at the edge of the road, waiting to flag
down Kenneth, there's not much of Shelly here, 
and stories about me and mine and life and death
seem more like a movie or a play than anything real,

and I realize that "getting back to normal" is the last
thing I want to do. Compared to this, even the highest
highs of "normal" seem about half dead.

And in the distance I hear the low ambling rumble
of a diesel growing louder and more immediate,
while I'm standing in the freedom of the Ultimate Reality.