I.
When we suffered the youth of Emma she would dash
out anytime it was warm, run the neighborhood
as if driven by a lashing of reckless joy, of abandon
until one day she dashed and I took after,
I’d been playing basketball weekly and was closer
to soccer playing shape than I’d ever be again
and I staked my authority on running her down
She went awhile and I went after
and she’d jog and I’d jog
and she’d dash and I’d dash and eventually
her spirit broke or her lungs had given all they could—
she stood panting, waiting for me. “Come on!” I hollered
pointing toward the house, and she trotted ahead
I was her master now
From now on when I barked she listened
II.
Princess, Emma’s mother, was one reason why
Lydia and I loved each other. We liked nothing
better when she was pregnant than filching a leash
from the doggie detritus at her mother’s house,
walking Princess in the park – a sweet dog, she greeted us
with the sweetness we wanted to feel for each other –
an avatar for the sweetness we felt even though
Lydia stabbed me with a fork once sitting at Dig’s Diner
as if testing, to see if there was a length and an end to my love,
and how could we know there would be?
Princess had puppies and we waited for our own pup,
the daughter dubbed “buppy” as a diminutive, the girl
who at 3 years old loved “burgercheese” and chased a llama
round a field. With her, we took Emma into our modest house
with 3 bedrooms we’d fill with ourselves and three more eventual
children and the band practice space in the basement
and the gutters we waited so long to clean
helicopter seeds sprouted maples in the stuck fermenting leaves
III.
With family and animals Lydia always wanted
more, bigger, so we took a brown poodle mix
called Chocolate from her mother like we’d adopted
the hapless foil in the family sitcom who always
got treated like an asshole even when innocent,
even Emma disliked Chocolate
and Emma was a reflection of ourselves
So Emma, middle-aged, still too much a puppy, still
excitable, tried so often to sneak through the gaps
in the plastic-fenced poopyard we had a handyman
chickenwire the interior side but yet Chocolate would
get out, the little bitch would not be caught and so
would not be ruled and during Lydia’s third pregnancy
when Luke was booting at the wombwall from the inside,
Chocolate was sent back to Lydia’s mother’s
IV.
to befriend googly-eyed Roman, the old weirdo
Zaya loved, a blue and white dog with one dark eye
and one crazy white one but she was a sweetheart
in the way an old gentle dog can be, looking up
with her crazy face, asking to be loved,
not exactly cute, not exactly hideous
isn’t that the way it is? Lydia might say or she might
prefer “ain’t,” her spoken grammar embarrassed her
for years she used a made up word for a bad mood
“sturly” – “my mom was pretty sturly so I took off”
It wasn’t that I wanted or didn’t want to be cruel
not telling her it wasn’t a real word, I just didn’t
want to negotiate the fallout, the wailing and the
gnashing of teeth, the Oh God What The Fuck
Is Wrong With Me Theatrics, then
a year or two before her death she discovered
“sturly” was her invention and asked why
I never said anything, but we were divorced
by then, I made an effort not to love her any more
V.
When Lydia died my only public emotion
was anger, was drinking, our kids didn’t know
how to carry their sadness, I wasn’t modelling
anything worth imitating, then the first sober
summer since Lyd died—4 years later—
they talked me into a dog, we testwalked
shelter strays – the first time a total disaster,
two hounds Dan and Ann sniffed along
the perimeter of the building as if detecting bombs
a third was chilled, casual, respected a walk but
went nuts with predator instinct by the small dog pens,
almost tore my arm off, a shelter person took the leash,
also got knocked on her ass – but we went back
and met a beagle with a tattooed S in her ear
and she was so anxious, so nervous, so eager to please
after we had her a few months Frannie caught me mumbling
in my sleep about how she’s my “soul-brother” – the shelter
called her Liberty but we renamed her Libby, we didn’t
want to seem like the kind of people who would name
an anxious beagle probably rejected as a hunting dog “Liberty”
And now she’s barking loud and friendly at Oren’s bedroom door
while Luke and his friends play D & D and 90s indie rock is on the record player
this dog too will sit at the window and look for the kids
to come back from wherever they are, as Emma used to,
as hapless Chocolate used to, so many dogs we’ve outlived
or haven’t – we must be like gods to them, we must be
some mighty beings of power and warmth who never falter.
Steve Henn wrote Guilty Prayer (Main Street Rag 2021), Indiana Noble Sad Man of the Year (Wolfson 2017), and two previous books from NYQ Books. Find out more at therealstevehenn.com.