after christmas

 

after christmas

I've come to wonder just now if every

time you had to shoot the dog

you walked farther and farther out

of yourself, our on that old wood's

road and came back with nothing

to report?  If that small transgression

we never knew anything about

had finally taken to bloom.  though

now I'm remembering it almost 

always happened in winter, all

those years at home we'd come to

having a dog that would live

year after year distant from

(though visible, if only by steam

rising through one end of the heap)

the house and never once invited

in, even when the wind would

slip up in the shingles outside my bed-

room and lift a moan out 

of the old storm

windows, a moan and a howl

of some animal being

touched in some god-

awful way it would never ask

for but could never

refuse.  Would you choose

which from the slew you kept

rifle you'd lift from the velvet

notches of the gunrack I'd made

in shop, the one that took on

two rifles and the underneath

single drawer you could keep

shells in or gun oil, or, i looked

once when you were gone, 

the collar of the beagle, links

sinking through the choke-hole 

ring and into my palm, fur at the kink

and greasy still with his stink.