dog poems

The incident, what happened, has to do
with the nature of things, the nature of
the pieces painted into the scene. First,
there’s the thunderstorm, not unexpected
this time of year, late summer, they start
at a distance, rumble and roar as they come
on, then here with wind and brief ferocious
rain, the sound effects center it, like some
angry god coming down on the guilty and
innocent alike. Then there’s the dog, my son’s
dog actually, who spends a lot of time with
us, she’s easily frightened by loud noises,
terrified by thunder, so terrified it’s as if
the word terrified came into being because
she was there in a thunderstorm, terrified.
I’m the last figure in the scene, not quite
the hero of the story, but I was there trying to
somehow fix what nature had made of things.
The thunderstorm came on, dogs hear them
first and react, so she raced to the cellar door
then downstairs, the thunder rippled and roared,
and she curled up shaking, trembling as if she
had become unhinged, whimpering, trying to
hide, further into herself, her fear. And I was there
sitting on the floor next to her, patting her head,
saying her name over and over in the most soothing
voice I could come up with, as if what I said in that
soothing voice could fix the nature of things, the way
things always seem to be.