Dying Dog

The dog lay on the shoulder of this one way road;
Bleaching like a dying person’s skin
With shallow gasps as if he’d run his final race.
He twitched one hind paw, every now and then
While his Spanish eyes teared into a gaze
As if he saw something well beyond;
Behind the clouded sun…
I whispered to him, as I bent upon one knee,
And I know it didn’t matter what I said,
As long as another’s voice reached out to him as company;
Not to hold him to this graveled naked grave
But to let him slip more easily
Into the place he had to go…
I toweled him with my shirt,
As much to comfort him
As I needed to be free
Of all my hit and runs
And the ones that waited up ahead for me.

Ken Siegelman
Brooklyn Poet Laureate