These Hazy Days

Rain Will Die

It's almost seven in the evening

On a sunny, stirring Tuesday. Planes

Are constant, but unworrying, in the sky.

The lavender that's encroaching on

Our front porch steps

Boasts unruly catacombs,

Bobbing condos, where the bees

Recline on purple porches and

Unseen bugs coat the long stems

With swatches of their spit.

I'm brushing my dog in the hard grass

Which mottles my knees with red.

Rain is smiling like he's never heard

Of fear before, or of the sadness

That is known to make one's entire body hurt.

Rain is smiling like he can see

All the colors of the July day—

All the green, the purple, and the yellow—

With his simple, soulful eyes.

I rake the brush along his wiry white fur,

Almost scrubbing him like a horse.

He's stocky and young and

He got his tail bobbed in some other

Owner's care, long before admission

To the Tacoma Humane Society.

His tail wags when guests come in—

When I come in—when he sees

Cinnamon or Whisper, the cats

Who will never love him.

He wags it as well when he sees dogs,

Whom he'd bite if they got close.

He howls too, resembling a mournful Malamute,

Yet he also barks like he's apt to kill them.

He won't.

I don't know what happened or what went on

When he was a stray roaming the streets—

But he loves every person fiercely.

He's smiling now like that's the only thing

He knows how to do—is to love devotedly.

He turns his deep brown eyes on me,

Tongue out and body almost

Heaving with contentment.

And then it hits me without warning:

The fact that Rain will die.

He's around three now, but

In seven, eight years' time,

He'll just die.

I'll be out of the house, unable

To have him with me, and I'll get

My parents' call and I'll come running home.

I'll see him with a blue towel—

The one I used to muffle treats in during play—

Wrapped gently around his figure.

The body will still be sturdy when I hold it,

Even more compact now in death.

I'll stroke his limp ears that flapped like birds' wings

When he ran, and the grief he never knew about

Will wrack me terribly.

Then we'll put him under our largest bigleaf maple.

My brother, who used to sit halfway on top of Rain

And call him stupid names

Will be there too, embracing me.

And then the cats will die as well,

Not to mention our senior hens.

It's likely, too, that I'll attend

Both my parents' funerals,

And I wonder all the time whether

My best friend will die before I do,

And I think of how—if she did—

I would never eat again.

Now Rain's rubbing his muzzle up against

The fragile summer grass, sneezing.

I take him close and bury my face

In his wild wiry scruff. I really do love him.

That's a whole pain of its own.