My Daughter's Dog

These are four poems written about my daughter's dog, Shadow, a male Siberian Huskey who lived with us for just over two years, until his death on December 28, 2013.

The first was written in January of 2012, the others in response to losing him.

He would have been eleven in March 2022

I like to pull

My daughter’s dog’s tail around

And tease his nose with it.

It’s still here,

I’ll tell him,

Right behind you,

Following you everywhere.

And he grabs onto it

With his mouth

And pulls himself

Around and around

Until he gets bored

And moves on.

Sometimes

My daughter’s dog

Races through the front door,

Skittering clickety clickety

Across the bamboo floor,

Turning towards the kitchen

Before he slams into the piano.

He must anticipate something remarkable,

Every moment being now,

To risk so much –

Like there’s really going to be

A pork chop in his food dish.

Finding none,

He stares at me,

Right eye red

In the reflected light.

You expect too much,

I tell him.

He’s a heavy sleeper.

One night,

A cougar cub stalked him

Within a couple of feet

On the dark deck

Before he awoke

From dream to nightmare.

He mostly sleeps inside now.

Some evenings,

When he

Comes in for the night,

He stretches out

Between the living room

And the kitchen,

Reaches out his front paw,

And tries to trip me

As I walk by.

He sings beautifully,

Although why he sings

Is beyond my ken.

It is as if he is moved from within

By some ancient wound to his heart

Or the heart of his kind,

The only trace

Being this long, blue wail

For everything lost and

Wild in the world.

My Daughter’s Dog

December 2013

My daughter’s dog

Is as much a part of me as breathing,

A constant in the metabolism of my day.

Beyond feed and water,

The choreography

Of moving around him

In my darkened room,

Walks up the road,

And beyond his song,

Predating the time his kind

First approached our fires,

There is the simple fact of temperature,

Of seeing him in the yard,

The patterns of black and white

Down his muzzle,

The feathered parabola of his tail,

And those ears,

Beacons of his breed,

Attuned to his every now.

Shadow come,

I say,

And here he is.

Except for this now,

This last now,

My face an inch from his,

My hand stroking the fur

Above his eye,

Over his temple,

Soft,

As if spun by spiders,

To the ready, white tufts at his ear,

Again and again,

My face so close to his,

Searching for him

In the sea of pupil,

Come back, Shadow,

Come back,

Until the vet touches my arm

Come back

And says

It’s time to let him go,

It’s time to let him go.

Dancing In The Dark

My daughter’s dog

Slept by the door

At the foot of my bed.

After 3 weeks,

My feet still search for him,

Remembering how we danced together

In the dark.

Falling Into A Hole

My daughter’s dog

Dug a hole by the garden gate.

Every now and then,

I fall into it

And remember

How easy it is

To miss someone

While sitting in the dark.

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