Dog

Chair
At the Olson House
Cushing, Maine

Dog

While I slept the dog’s chain tightened
around her neck and shrank from its once

stainless glitter into rust.  And a moss on her
fur, the dullest of green greens in the full black night.

In the fog in the night a deeper green came,
fuller calm it was a place to lay my face
in the moist hollow to take in her great
wet scent and rest on the last two ribs.

Before, when there were two dogs and it was

winter, I couldn’t see them from my bed-

room window past October after

the plastic went over my view of the whole

outside world became a thick cow's hoof.

And all day all night the life and lives of dog

after dog after dog all on those heavy

chains (the same ones that would stake

out once, before she died, that cow) and I think: Jesus,

some things are unforgivable: while

I slept and the fire went out and the wind

blew off the water and down the chimney and the boat

dipped in the cove and took it all on

while the thermometer was being sucked

from the bottom by some frigid lip

and throat while I curled in the cold, cold

room and the wind blew the dog

the collie the beagle the spaniel

the retriever one after another and only

one at a time we only ever had one (except

that once when there were two)

dog at a time dug and dug in the corner

of their cold house while their paws pads

bled warm then froze bled warm then froze

as they licked them and licked them

while inside my house the last of the first

flaming birch was crumbling to cool ash

and in the morning I’d see my breath

in my room and I’d hug the dog on my way

to school and take a hot meal there

and save maybe a bit of bread then then forget

and eat it on the way home and want

to feed the dog but it’s too late now and settle

instead to let her lick my face and mouth

and the crumb or two left but she’d be

gone, shot

while I was thumbing that bread on the school

bus but I didn’t know of course until

the blood on her threshold and on the crusted

snow and her water bowl tipped over

and the hunk frozen with one hole one tea-

kettle stream and I kicked it I did I kicked

it and licked and licked my own lips

and went inside and tried, I did I tried but

what?  it was winter, it was dark early

and while I slept the dog’s chain grew

cold and colder still and froze.