The dog just died.
Ten miles in, among the saxifrage
and the boulders,
a lump of red hair, froth at
the mouth.
The flies already around,
the smell like nothing else.
The morning getting hot
as the sun crept down
the rim of Eagle Creek.
There was no reason for it,
not that we could see.
The dog went to sleep, and woke up
dead.
Mysterious as a fish that walks
from one puddle to another.
It wasn’t a problem so much
as a carcass to be buried now,
wrapped in a nylon tent for a shroud
carried up the slope
into the scree.
Piling granite upon the
dead, first a ring of stones
and then working in
then that point where
one has to be placed directly upon
the body.
Then it is not just an exercise,
it is the taste of bile
on the tongue
the thought of the lungs piled under so many
rocks not able to breath,
it is the first cobble upon
all graves to come.
my own for instance
One last check for breath
before the stone is laid down squarely on
the stomach
then the rest
the plonking sound
of granite on granite.
It made a tidy mound,
a cairn for mouse and
moisture to rearrange
with some orange paintbrush
and dog kibbles for an
offering
to life and death itself.
Oh, maybe there was some other place
than this
for the dog’s soul
to roam to.
But It was a day of blooming paintbrush
in shadeless meadows,
the scent of crushed horsemint.
The sky was blue,
the snowmelt draining
through the spongy alpine meadow
roaring over the rocks.
And I doubt the aspen
leaves anywhere else
twinkle like a
thousand silver mirrors,
the way they do there.
