Death of the Old Dog

It is time for the old dog to slip down
beneath the grass, to taste the sharp iron
of earth on her broad lolling tongue,
to yield the sap of her eyes to the blind worm
and her thick brown pelt to the cold roots
of the twisted Northern Spy behind the barn.
Her deep moans will shudder in its branches
with the wind that rattles the storm door
as she once did, let me in
to my coiled rag rug by the fire,
let me in.
She lies down there to be sipped up by the dewy grasses
to be swept, a colored dust-cloud,
painting the high sweep of canyon wind,
to be dropped from a hawk’s lizardy talons
becoming hawk, wind and all,
the clear substance that they swim in,
the slow honey amber of memory and light.

by Nancy Henry