HOUND
For Adam Tovel
You circle your own house with your dog,
who knows when to sit before you know
to ask him. You are mutually impressed,
as if both of you learned the same word
in different languages. You trust his language
more. He wakes when you wake dreaming
about the same high grasses. Another word.
No one knocks now when the snow
makes of you a warmer planet. So much
for the terror of your first child's first seizure.
So much for the collision of cars, the spray
of glass, a brown belt left on the seat of a blue van
at the body shop. Did those people make it?
No. This kind of terror takes years to be made
like the fog that has settled on all the kitchen
tumblers. First the water, then its reason.
It takes years to arrive and when it does,
even your dog, who is otherwise oblivious
to history and always kind, will whimper
for you in your own terrible language.