XXIV
one:
I like that thought: that the dark knows
how tall we are, how small we are,
if we shake in it or if we become in it.
We are marked here, aren’t we? And
whatever happens there, the scars are the
echo
of our departure, a long, long hum,
pulse.
I remember the dog that bit me. Alone, this
poor mutt had likely been beaten
before he came to be tied, houseless,
to our tree. I saw the black-veined meat
of his gums, as if his opening jaw were on
slow cinema—before he sunk his teeth in my
left
cheek, three inches from my eye.
I was four. My daughter’s age now.
A piece of him is still there, resting
on my jaw-bone, or in the ball
and socket of my jaw, slightly out of
grind.
It sets me—this jaw, shaped by a little
dog.
Later I would defend him—he wasn’t
provoked,
he was just hungry. Lonely.
Sad. When
my father shot him, I wonder if his
expression
was relief. Standing there then, face to mouth
with my dog, was/is my first memory of dark-
ness and how much of it I could stand in
without crying out, dog, me, hanging on.
Yes, just the dog and me. A hot August day…
somewhere, miles away, my father was
cutting
hay.
Drinking beer. That tractor,
moving
in low groans, is like the dog, after I’m
able
to pull away, who leaps one more
time. By then,
I’m on my face in the blurry grasses
and he reaches the end of his
chain. It vibrates
and sings.
Even today, thirty six years later,
when I hear a chain gone on force to its
end, I smell
that dog, our spit and blood, the piles of his shit I
fell in
getting away, the scar of our agreement
left
and now a low stitched moon, or part of
one…
two:
Baby, you will have a scar. They’ll cut a thin line
of skin across your abdomen, pull the flesh
open to peer at what’s not working in your
dark.
But that will be later. After ten days of surveillance
and tinctures of time, you were eating.
you were passing water. And solids.
And they let you come home. We had carried
your coming home clothes with us
everywhere.
Soft, off-white fleece. You looked like
a pillow I could lay my head down on,
finally,
and sleep. And pray, maybe, to some quiet god,
a gratitude, and to beg
for sufficient breasts
to feed your days and nights with the safety
of a warm fully belly.
