Dog Years
BY MICHAEL BAZZETT
We’re all aware that when we are walking
the dog, and he spends an hour lovingly sniffing
posts and tufts, and we then return home
and his tongue hangs from his panting mouth,
that somehow seven hours have passed for him,
which means that, allotting time for grieving,
our lives consist of maybe five dogs, and when we
clutch the slack skin behind a puppy’s ear, when
we gather up that impossibly soft coat into our fists,
part of the stabbing intensity of our grip comes
from grief. Right there. Even as that soft pink
tongue is licking you. But what we do not
consider often enough is that old-growth maples
peer down at us in the same way, bewildered
by how soon we are gone, how little we grasp
while we’re here, at our odd rootless ways of love.