Blessings of a Dog
When You're in the Middle of It
“You must praise the mutilated world.” Adam Zagajewski
She chases the threadbare tennis ball
across the kitchen, dives under a chair, slides
to catch it mid-roll and then trots back
bearing the wet gift in her mouth
and asks with her eyes and paws
for me to throw it again. And I do,
again and again repeat this simple joy,
until tired she throws herself onto my lap
and gnaws my knuckles. Sometimes I want
this forever. The way a perfect fall morning
lingers in the scent of walnut trees.
All the grief of a summer we carried
like water, spilling with each labored step.
She’s still a pup, has enough play in her
for twelve years or so. I know how that goes.
You love, they love. Everything goes on
like it should until it doesn’t. She doesn't
know there’s something broken in the world
that a ball can't fix, like a bearing that makes
the machine run smoother. Like the smell
of woodsmoke in the air that reminds
us of childhood innocence, even though
something in the distance is burning.
When You're in the Middle of It
I've stopped trying to scare the deer
away from the garden, though September
tomatoes still ripen on the vines.
Two fawns, skinny as clouds, look
into my porch light at night, trip
over each other as the mother
flicks her white flag in caution.
Months and moonlight cover
the same yard as usual, same
world as last year, though my wife
coughs and recovers in the upstairs
dark. Every night there's more
of them. Standing under the pines
like a broken wind chime in a storm.
They want what I want, what we all
want. For each season to do its best
and move on. For life to be easier
to live. I took the fence down today,
spread the best fruit out on the lawn. It's
all I can do as the days get shorter,
the cold we knew was coming, come.
Grant Clauser is the author of five books including Muddy Dragon on the Road to Heaven (winner of the Codhill Press Poetry Award) and Reckless Constellations (winner of the Cider Press Poetry Award). Poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Cortland Review, Southern Poetry Review, Poet Lore, Tar River Poetry and others. He works as an editor and teaches at Rosemont College.
