Ode to the Dog
by Anemone Beaulier
You were a shelter mutt, curled
on stained concrete. Hiccups jolted
your ribcage. You cocked your head,
your wrinkled lower lip caving
into your mouth like a toothless old man’s,
and I thought of my childhood dog
and afternoons beneath an aspen
tree, looking for patterns in the sun-backed leaves.
I took you home; you
pissed on the new rug. You ate
the cover of Frost’s Collected Poems
and a corner of the sofa. You got fleas.
You ate the fleas and got worms.
You dug up the dahlias and puked
in the car. The tally of chewed shoes
grew as you grew.
I began to count
the minutes that weren’t mine
alone: mopping dirt and dog hair
from the floor, tossing a ball until
my arm ached, praising you
as you squatted to shit. I remembered
my mother’s eyes when I was small, dull
as old pennies. I scouted a backwoods road
where I might drop you one night.
But every morning, you nosed
my bare calf. My arm grew strong
enough to toss the ball until you dropped,
and I stopped checking the kitchen
tiles for dirt after our walks.
I thought about how a person can learn
to want almost anything, how the oil
in your coat had come to smell
like my father’s sweat and cologne.
