Dead Dog Song

Sam, bless him, has died and left this home, the woodchucks running wild, the bushes overgrown. Slip unseen into the skein of trees, slide through dusky grasses and scatter his ashes. It’s all over, he’s never coming back. There’ll be no more roaming. He was only here for fourteen years, and now the branches scratch my face and I can’t hold back my tears. Long ago I’d see him running in the snow, he’d come in from the cold and he’d lie down by the stove. Pass along this loping road, the needley grasp of briars on the slope. He’d never been to church, so he doesn’t have a soul. He isn’t waiting at the place where all of us will go. But the woodchucks wouldn’t run so wild, the bushes wouldn’t be so overgrown if we were not alone. Bound unbound through the boundless air, remaining wisps of hair. Barking out through everywhere, the trees, the grass, the rain, and Sam in the air. He was in this world, by my side he was curled, but he came uncurled and this world holds him that much tighter.