South Fork Poetry: ‘How sweet the time’
Lola the aging Chesapeake
retriever turns to a pup again
jumping in circles when I say
beach so I often spell it if not
intending to actually go there
(with her). Now at 6 a.m. we
are going and she knows it!
I spread the synthetic red
blanket over my car’s back
seat tucking in the edges
even though sand will still spill
out when I shake it later and
that’s okay. I prepare the bag
of organic dog treats, remove
her collar. She moan/grunts, hind
legs dangling behind the rest
of her bear-like middle as she
heaves herself onto the seat
of my banged up bumper-stickered
green machine. I offer a gentle
nudge with my knees for the last
lift, unlike the rushed pushes
of the past, try a downward
(dog) hoping the ache in my
calves will let go, then grab
the tennis ball but she’s not
enticed, only seems to want
my company and to be exactly
where we’ve arrived even as she
lumbers, right hind buckling,
even as she looks to one side
then the other as if lost now and
then, the brown jagged planet
growing on the side of her eye
dragging her lid like an emblem —
the hideous in each of us that we
want to cut off. She follows her
nose and the salt air, half blind
I’m sure, as if something farther
away, beyond the paws, barks,
and impediments in her life or
mine, is calling. I don’t know if
that’s true. No longer will she join
me in the waves, scratching my skin
exuberantly, long nails dialing
the water. She wades in hip deep,
waits for me as I dive, float and
exclaim the glory of our circumstance.
In the rolling quiet between blue,
green and the finest ground stone
caressing the bottoms of our different
feet, I ask if this early morning
intimacy in our ripening melts
away the damage of past neglect.
No one else is around. It’s just
us, a woman and dog shaking
off time and water.
Kathy Engel has poems forthcoming in Women’s Voices for Change, Poet Lore, and “Ghost Fishing,” an anthology. She lives in Sagaponack.