Bereavement Behind his house, my father’s dogs
sleep in kennels, beautiful,
he built just for them.
They do not bark.
Do they know he is dead?
They wag their tails
& head. They beg
& are fed.
Their grief is colossal
& forgetful.
Each day they wake
seeking his voice,
their names.
By dusk they seem
to unremember everything—
to them even hunger
is a game. For that, I envy.
For that, I cannot bear to watch them
pacing their cage. I try to remember
they love best confined space
to feel safe. Each day
a saint comes by to feed the pair
& I draw closer
the shades.
I’ve begun to think of them
as my father’s other sons,
as kin. Brothers-in-paw.
My eyes each day thaw.
One day the water cuts off.
Then back on.
They are outside dogs—
which is to say, healthy
& victorious, purposeful
& one giant muscle
like the heart. Dad taught
them not to bark, to point
out their prey. To stay.
Were they there that day?
They call me
like witnesses & will not say.
I ask for their care
& their carelessness—
wish of them forgiveness.
I must give them away.
I must find for them homes,
sleep restless in his.
All night I expect they pace
as I do, each dog like an eye
roaming with the dead
beneath an unlocked lid.
Memorial Day Thunder knocks
loud on all the doors.
Lightning lets you
inside every house,
white flooding
the spare, spotless rooms.
Flags at half mast.
And like choirboys,
clockwork, the dogs
ladder their voices
to the dark, echoing off
each half-hid star.
Greening It never ends, the bruise
of being—messy,
untimely, the breath
of newborns uneven, half
pant, as they find
their rhythm, inexact
as vengeance. Son,
while you sleep
we watch you like a kettle
learning to whistle.
Awake, older,
you fumble now
in the most graceful
way—grateful
to have seen you, on your own
steam, simply eating, slow,
chewing—this bloom
of being. Almost beautiful
how you flounder, mouth full, bite
the edges of this world
that doesn’t want
a thing but to keep turning
with, or without you—
with. With. Child, hold fast
I say, to this greening thing
as it erodes
and spins.
Copyright © 2014 by Kevin Young. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
