Being Hugh Lofting (and Conceiving the Doctor Dolittle Books of Children’s Literature)

Photographer - Tobi Brun

Being Hugh Lofting
(and Conceiving the Doctor Dolittle Books of Children’s Literature)

Desperate to distance himself from death and despair
from the stench of the trenches of the so-called Great War
the war that wouldn’t end all war after all
desperate to distance himself from depravity and destruction
the slaughter of not only humans but other animals —
horses and pigs and goats and donkeys and dogs and cats and cows ...
first in Flanders and then in France
the M.I.T.-educated British lieutenant
not a soldier by profession but a civil engineer
he escapes the poison gas the shell-shocked carnage
the shrapnel-shredded bodies
including, eventually, his own ...
he escapes via floating flying imagination-packed
pacifist letters to wife and children who wait and worry
lighthearted letters with stories and sketches
creating an innocent world of talking animals
presided over by a gentle-humored human doctor
who learns all their languages and heals all their ills.

Robert Eugene Rubino is a septuagenarian writer who has published prose and poetry in various online and print journals in addition to three collections. He's smart enough to solve the New York Times crossword puzzle on Mondays (other days not so much).