waning

By natural

selection, the word

originates its species,

                                    the blood flowers,

…

and small birds scavenge

                in the chaste late winter grass.

            “Winter Mornings in Charlottesville”

                                Robert Hass

But moon, I’m thinking

I should stop looking

for you.  I’m thinking

I should turn away,

that I should be the one, now,

to do the waning.

Moon…

did you know?

my cheek’s been scared

since I was four.  The family

dog bit me there.  He turned me

inside out.  I was alone

with him.  Maybe what poured

out of me and onto the grass

he licked clean

when I finally

got free and ran

home.

But maybe not.  Maybe

the blood and skin

dried against August’s

sun and he lay panting

beneath the shade

of that birch he was chained to,

birch whose morning

you set against,

summer after summer, when I

come home again.

 

The dog

was shot not long

after my face was sewn.

Sometimes (but I couldn’t be

 there

so I can’t know

for sure)

I imagine he went into the woods

ahead of my father

and sat when he was told

and looked up

and then turned his jaw

away, as though the mean

in him had finally

been set free. 

Bullets are the sounds

of endings, aren’t they?

I don’t have a gun, moon—

but the woods are still there,

and the path into them.

I think I’ll go

and try to find my dog.

I think you cannot come

along.  I think

when I come out

on the other side

you may be there

and you may ask

how I’ve been

and you may reach

for my cheek...

and before

I would have leaned

 forward. I would have.

But you hesitated.

You hesitated.