LIFE LESSON?

Our Welsh terrier was a wanderer,
leave the door open and you would
spend the next hour ringing
neighbors’ doorbells and asking:

Did you see a black and tan dog . . .?
So on sunny afternoons
we’d tie her leash to the porch
post for an hour or so.

That day our daughter, age 10, came
home from school and found her
hanging by her leash
her paws barely touching the ground.

Come and help me bury her
I said. She shook her head, sobbing.
I placed the warm body
in her arms and insisted.

We walked to the woods.
I dug the hole. She held Tess,
then laid her gently down.
Toss some dirt on her I said.

Was I wrong?

POSTMORTEM

At the corner the 3 o’clock
bus from the middle school
spills three girls, two boys,
who trickle toward us
then stop to look at a lump.

Ooh . . . gross is what
(I think) the girls say
and skitter away.
The boys stay
and stare and hoot.

We approach.
Dinah’s upraised tail
anticipates epiphany
and there it is --
squashed squirrel.

That’s so cool one says,
its eyes popped out like that.
I tug the leash. Let’s go
I say to her and pull hard.
Let’s just take his word for it.

BURN PILE

All summer long
I cut and pulled and carried them here --
hedge clippings
fallen branches from the big oaks
dessicated peonies
trimmed off spruce shoots
all of them gathered now
like a congregation waiting to be fired

I am the striker of the flame
that sputters
crackles
then leaps upwards
into orange roar

Who can not believe in transformation
Who would be foolish enough to think
I did it

HOW IT'S DONE

take a bolt of cloth, pins,
thread -- dress

take stone, wood,
nails -- house

take sound, silence,
sound -- concerto

take nothing,
all -- cosmos

WHEN SEPTEMBER COMES

When September comes
there are signs of departure
Canadian cold creeps down and
nudges mugginess southward
green begins to leave the leaves
summer birds start booking flights
light retreats from both ends of days

And you child this first day
go bravely on your way to the bus stop
preparing us for a going forth
that a decade or so from now
will be for . . . good