When Lee Drew It
With apologies to Sharon Olds for the rhythm I swiped.
Although this is what Lee had never pictured,
his dog as a brother,
although it became how Lee now pictured it to be
after he had last observed it, lithe and black,
panting down in the roadside gully
with soft dog blood
splattered on its torn fur. Lee pictured that
fragility. He pictured that awful awareness. He sketched and
sketched it as if it were a vast,
overcast landscape. Lee sketched and sketched and
sketched it upon an envelope before he smudged it out,
whimpering and blotted. Although this
was the way it was because Lee pictured
precisely that, pictured there to be a brother
nothing like him, and who could not come back, yet he
rubbed his hand light across it,
he rubbed and rubbed it with the blunt, stiff
stump of his hand like a floured palm
across beaten, kneaded, whole wheat dough
before its life quaw-pufted through the nether side of its belly:
a young, know-nothing dog, busted, beaten, stiff,
sand dark like fresh yeast scattered in the marrow of its bones.
It lay there then like it still lies
curled in the crook of the ground, a child
who played the game of pain, back limbs splayed.
But Lee remembers it looking up into him the way
unprepared losers of chicken, ashudder in the ditch,
stare at the passing cars,
the eyes of their hubcaps glazing.