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.