Proving Grounds, The

My Dog Teaches Me to Be Human

71 my dog TeAches me To be humAn You can tell what dogs know by the way their tails fall, The way their ears clamp down smooth along their heads, The way they almost seem to slip into themselves, Retracting their fur, when the shouting or crying begins. Everything about them is fallen: Their shoulders, eyes darting to the side Like fireflies that disappear July nights, The bones of their hips, like a human’s Tones could kill them, put them forever to sleep. I never noticed when Beckett slunk away At my first angry note, the way he’d hide tight against the wall In the back closet. My rage was all there was Like a discharged heart, a record stuck on feedback That screamed and screamed again. For years he’d disappear For hours, minutes, even days, and when he died I was in Lancaster, England, 3,500 miles away from him Bent down in a cold, old flat, my head hunched in, Slipping into myself as another’s rage unleashed on me, A punishment for Beckett, maybe, the student’s voice That I hired to watch him folded over the phone and clotted With tears, telling me Beckett couldn’t stop crying, 15, lost hips, and too much pain And I was not there to hold him When the vet slid the needle in. I ran out some long English road To where a bridge and oak forest Arched over a lake, and it was then I prayed, not for his fine black fur, 72 The way age made him deaf, and blind, And trap himself in corners, bumping His nose on the wall and then standing Until I’d come to lead him out, not for the years He’d moved with me fromTucson to Laguna Beach To Irvine, California and then NewYork State, not for Every morning he’d run miles with me before sunrise, Stopping to mark very flower, each tree, not for this. I prayed for every syllable that made him cringe, Each hour in closets, each minute he didn’t exist, And when Isak, who followed him, would sit By my thigh and cry and cry each time I raised my voice, I stopped yelling. I touched her fur; I could see her, she knew everything, I stopped. ...