Paisley Rekdal teaches at the University of Utah and was the state’s Poet Laureate from 2017 – 2022. She has received many awards and scholarships and writes both fiction and poetry. For her biography and bibliography see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paisley_Rekdal and https://www.paisleyrekdal.com/
Today’s dog poem comes from her 2016 book Imaginary Vessels
Once
by Paisley Rekdal
white field. And the dog
dashing past me
into the blank,
toward the nothing.
Or:
not running anymore but
this idea of him, still
in his gold
fur, being
what I loved him for
first, so that now
on the blankets piled
in one corner
of the animal hospital
where they’ve brought him out
a final hour, two,
before the needle
with its cold
pronouncements,
he trembles with what
he once was: breath
and muscle puncturing
the snow, sudden
stetting over the tips
of the meadow’s buried
grasses after–what
was it, a rabbit?
Field mouse? Dashing
past me on my skis,
for the first time
faster, as if
he had been hiding this,
his good uses. What
a shock to watch
what you know unfold
deeper into, or out of
itself. It is like
loving an animal:
hopeless, an extravagance
we were meant for:
startled, continually,
by what we’re willing
to feel. The tips
of the grasses high
in the white. And the flat
light, drops of water
on the gold
coat, the red, the needle
moving in, then out,
and now the sound of an animal
rushing past me in the snow.
My humble homage haiku: Moving Toward the White
Winter’s coming soon –
leaving and joining loved ones
’til we come round right
Life Matters 