Friday, May 14, 2021

Once by Paisley Rekdal

Once

white field. And the dog
dashing past me
into the blank,
 
toward the nothing.
Or:
not running anymore but
 
this idea of him, still
in his gold
fur, being
 
what I loved him for
first, so that now
on the blankets piled
 
in one corner
of the animal hospital
where they’ve brought him out
 
a final hour, two,
before the needle
with its cold
 
pronouncements,
he trembles with what
he once was: breath
 
and muscle puncturing
the snow, sudden
stetting over the tips
 
of the meadow’s buried
grasses after–what
was it, a rabbit?
 
Field mouse? Dashing
past me on my skis,
for the first time
 
faster, as if
he had been hiding this,
his good uses. What
 
a shock to watch
what you know unfold
deeper into, or out of
 
itself. It is like
loving an animal:
hopeless, an extravagance
 
we were meant for:
startled, continually,
by what we’re willing
 
to feel. The tips
of the grasses high
in the white. And the flat
 
light, drops of water
on the gold
coat, the red, the needle
 
moving in, then out,
and now the sound of an animal
rushing past me in the snow.



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