I name that dogged canine as she travels alongside us, 

my mother dead from plague 

a few months after you went sick

with Parkinson’s, our grandson with cancer, 

while I go slowly blind. 

Now in late summer, that dog lies in front of the alders, 

her litter of pups nipping and bouncing around her, 

as the Northwest forests burn, the Orcas and salmon die off.  

Forgive me if I believe my hound knows something 

about grief’s mojo, how there is an extraordinary engine

behind the flashing red lights, the firs and spruce 

swaying as they bend to the blades

of the medivac helicopter lowering the basket down. 

She knows the wake let loose behind abundance

is dangerously strong. This morning, 

she’s come closer than ever before,

her musk near the lavender in my yard. 

It’s not just my life. Not just my hound of infinite sorrows, 

I’m thinking as I kneel beside the handful of bees 

silent in the damp grass. 

Their last day gathering pollen, feasting on nectar. 

I’ve heard that time is a mother.

But I say she’s a cur and a siren.

How one day you’ll find yourself 

like the bees—

so awkward with amazement, 

so weighted with all you’ve been given,

you can no longer rise.

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