Old Dog at Night
The old dog mewls at the back door
frozen shut—I cannot open it
to show him there’s nothing
out there—and so he moans
like the humpback whale
spinning slowly on its flukes
six hundred feet deep amid
the blackest blue, pearling
the abyss with spiral song
rising into a congeries of stars
spun from their dark center,
notes lonely and pure as the last
castrato soaring the silent night,
silence that seems as cruel then
as now, in this dog’s last December.
But look how he pauses and tilts
his head to listen, then begins
again, as if he were the one
answering the song that is
already there, hidden among
the secret frequencies, melos
quiet as the fern tingling
its green fingers in April rain
as the dead earth wakes once more.
And so the old dog whimpers
and keens and sometimes simply
stares in sympathy with the sad
beautiful things of this world
for which I lack, for which he has,
the softest silken ears to hear.