committal

Committal

I can imagine men who search the earth

For handy resurrections, overturn

The body of a beetle in its grave.

                                    James Wright

                        from “On the Skeleton of a Hound”

Not even a bone or a favor,

only an empty doorway, a limp

chain—a tuft of fur still

in the blue collar.

I’ve thought about it in other words

but there’s still a slight rattle,

then a gallop when the wind’s

right and the bridge I stand

on begins to sway…it’s too

far to see a bottom, let alone

where he may have buried you—

all the yous—because

when it happens

more than once the names

and the bodies begin to blur,

every breed mixed in a mongrel

brilliance that smells first

before ever seeing, the gun

oil on his hands when he comes

to take everything apart

at the neck, gently so the cold

won't close over the pulse of raw

where the collar rubbed and stuck

and froze after chaffing, a red

so red it looked like a skinned

rabbit to me.  Oh Dog.  You are

a long line of dogs to bury

your nose into the palm of his

hand and imagine, do you? a moon

full enough to raise your neck

to, once you’ve peeled

yourself out of your heavy fur,

once the man, gun down, sinks

his boot into the shovel and digs

the way a boy would dig,

shaking against the pure geometry

of width and length

and the occasional curve

of a root from the nearby birch.