The Old Dog
It was one of the coldest winters, yet
the old dog never showed up at the kitchen door
like he used to, whimpering to be let in
for warmth and food.
Where he spent his nights, or how he got
his food, we could only guess. Even his paw tracks
in fresh or deep snow were missing.
Then, on a warm spring day, when red-tail hawks
circle the sky with hungry eyes, while walking
in a field newly greened, there, in the distance,
I saw a flurrie of bickering crows.
Closer, I saw why– it was the old dog on his side,
his ribs protrubing through emaciated skin
sagging over the emerging skeleton, his
underbelly gutted, all but scoured out,
only vestiges of internal organs remaining.
A savage hunger had clawed its way into
the old dog. Fecal matter had spilled into
the open cavity, his head and face sunk
into the thawed earth as on a pillow,
the mouth barely opened revealing gaps
where teeth once grew, the tongue chewed out.
Around his carcass a vigorous, vibrant ring
of lush grass feeding off its remaining bodily fluids.
Crows loved carrion, they would make a meal
of him, competing for choice pieces of putrid flesh,
his bones picked clean. Other creatures, drawn by
the smell, would carry off the carcass – a fox
or gray wolf, even a leashless neighborhood dog.
And what for years had been the old familiar dog,
was no more.
In this poem, I have brought the old dog
back to life, rescued him like a shadow from
my ever diminishing memory and with words
restored him to flesh and blood.
And every time this poem is read,
the old dog will live again, and others
will come to know him as I did.
Yet human memory is no more permanent
than words or freak April snow.
For I, too, must lie down in that ever
approaching field, where no light is,
no new grass, no blue sky, or red-tail hawk –
only the silence of something like an endless
existence we struggle to understand. And who’s
to say who really has been spared?
Copyright ©
Maurice Rigoler
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