An Audience of One

Penny accepted the Alabama neighbor's green meat,
Died in our swept-dirt back yard
Near the black wash pot, her brown spot penny-
Side up. My mother's dog, but like
All pets, with no sense of justice:
After forty years she still haunts
Me, innocent of her death, with
These images. My mother en-
Trusted to me the folly of love,
The daily care of caring for them,
And the rest were all mine to lose,
Mockery in their dying
And more than fear in running away.
Rex, ears clipped, tail bobbed, escaped
Into Pennsylvania nowhere
In a cloud of flea powder for no reason
That a twelve-year-old could know.
Micky Midnight, the stray gift to me,
Sick in bed from school, black
As only cats can be, stuck it out
Only long enough for the perfect name
And took it with him.
Fulton (after Sheen the bishop
For his round skull cap), my one canary,
Died so soon after he'd learned to sing,
Finally, that I wondered if song
Were worth the cost. And last: Sinbad.
One morning before Pharmaceutical Latin
In nineteen fifty-two I watched him die
My nearest death between my absent brother's
Bed and mine, stretched out, rasping, so closely
Watched I knew and remember which half-second
Distemper tore the last breath out.
But the people: how different.
Since nineteen thirty-three
I've been the key to immortality:
All it takes is loving me:
Both parents, who had me
When they were young; the brother
Who left me there that morning
Alone when that dog died;
A wife who let me go
With her life, our three sons;
Another wife bringing
Her hostages to fortune,
Two daughters; all the lovers.
What will I do?
They are all here. At my age what will I do
With only a bird and a dog long ago?
I cried for days. For days and days.

Gerald Barrax was Professor of English, Poet-in-Residence, and Editor of Obsidian at North Carolina State University at Raleigh. He is the author of five volumes of poems, Another Kind of Rain, An Audience of One, The Deaths of Animals and Lesser Gods, Leaning Against the Sun, and From a Person Sitting in Darkness: Selected and New Poems. He is retired and lives in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

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