Queenie

Queenie is my old lady dog of 17.  She was my oldest son's 12th birthday present.  He is 28 now.  Just like in "My Dog Skip"  the kid moves away and leaves the dog at home.  They get on with their lives and leave their pasts in the dirt for moms to clean up and take care of.  Another role of a mother: we nurture dogs also.

Sometimes I look at her and wonder if she remembers him and misses him?  I know now I am her whole world.  She can no longer see clearly or hear.  Her bones ache and she is frail on her legs.  A lot of time she stands and stares for the longest time as if to say,

"Now what was I going to do?  Or where was I going?"

As I watch her decline I worry about her.  The biggest worry is,

"When am I going to have to make THE DECISION?"

I worry when she doesn't eat.  I worry when she looks confused.  I worry when she can only walk 50 feet and then look up at me as if to ask,

"Please carry me now."

I come home and always quickly check to see if she is moving or breathing.  I worry every time I have to leave her alone.

I think this is probably going to be her last summer.  The times she is weak seem greater than the times she wags her tail and smile at me.

I know she is feeling pain from her arthritis.  Her last medication caused her liver enzymes to go way up.  Last week I got her some new meds.  These could cause kidney problems.  So yesterday when she would not eat and I did not see her drink my first thought was,

"Is she starting to have kidney failure?"

Today I did not give her the meds just to see.  She turned her nose up at the chicken noodle baby food but did eat a wee bit of honey yogurt.  She drank some chicken broth and Dog Ensure.  She doesn't seem to be drinking as much water.  She is still peeing and had a small poop.  (Can you tell she is consuming my life right now?)

At one point today I looked at her and she seemed so sad and confused.  It occurred to me it may be time.  Just as quickly as the thought occurred, I pushed it out of my brain.

Once she is gone it will symbolically end my past life of husband and family.  She is the last tie left.  I dread the sorrow and mourning I know I will experience once she is gone.  I don't even know how to prepare for it.  I cry now as I even write this down.

I had to make this decision with my Allie dog a year and a half ago.  I know the hurt fades as do the memories.  I still remember the rawness of the loss and the many tears.

I think what I fear the most will be the bitterness I will feel for my son for abandoning her to me and never once checking back on her to see how she is doing.  I fear I will have a difficult time forgiving him for what seems like such a callous abandonment.

What I will do is tempt her with juicy morsels of whatever I can find she will eat.  I will hug and kiss her which she just tolerates.  I will continue to worry about her and plan my day around not leaving her alone too much.  I trust I will know when the time is right to say goodbye to her.

I know the tears and yes, gut-wrenching sobs, will happen but I know the hurt will fade.  She will forever be in tombed in my heart and symbolic of the end of a marriage and family.  For she is now my only immediate family I have left.

Pastor Bill Cwirla told me on the death of Allie that he believed the closeness that man feels toward dogs is a remnant left from the garden before the Fall.  I like that and it gives comfort.

My Queenie Beanie will be my precious memory.  She has been a companion that has never failed me or left me.  She loves me unconditionally.

I won't miss the poop and pee stains on the carpet though.

Daddy Death

The wheat, radiant rays,
seeming to the sun,
dazzled our eyes.
Out of corners, grasshoppers
dodged, fwipping the air
with their wings.
We laughed
at the dog who led
our passage
through rows of chin high wheat.

Sentinel dog,
jumped so high
to stay the course.

The horizontal landmarks:
tree, fencepost, wire.
The tree to catch the clouds,
the fencepost to nail down the grass,
the wire to conduct electricity.
All to keep us and the cows
in the field.



II.


The tree squatted in the ditch,
cooling its haunches in the silty brown,
from clouds tangled in its branches,
leftovers from the thunderstorm the night before.

Our toes cradled  in the muddy bottom,
water lapping at our belly buttons.
Sentinel dog with lolling tongue,
watching over us.


Later, clothes drying on our sun burnt bodies,
mud caking between our toes,
we'd march militant
in the rows of wheat,
keeping time
with hidden cicadas.


Southward to the border,
field rimmed and wired, grounded
in a metal pole
with porcelain earrings.
A silver strand,
a spider's bite
humming in its veins.

We could straddle,
crawl, 'neath the barb wire,
evade sand burrs, musk thistle, devil's claw.
This.
This wire was forbidden.

"Did Daddy really say?"

"Would it really...?"

"Do we dare...?"


Could death be so easy?
A touch?

Like our ancestors we'd reach to grasp
the silver line,
shimmering in silence...

We felt the bite,
disobeyed our dad.

The sting was not yet death,
but almost death.

Death came not to girls
in Kansas sun.
The disobedience
was a warning for our future.
It only emphasized
the final outcome.

III.
The passage
is in the rings of trees,
the till of soil,
a child's laugh,
a dog's bark.

That ghost of sentinel dog,
vaporized between the stalks of wheat.
Our feet became large and clothed.
The fence corrupt,
corroded.
The disobedience of death in a father's words,
and the obedience of a son
to take the sting
of electric fences
and forbidden touches,
to raise the bodies.
dead in disobedience.

What I enjoy

I enjoy being able to spend money on my aging dogs with out my husband bitching at me for wasting money and asking me,

"When are they going to die anyway?"

Then he would dig at it and dig at it trying to wear me down.  I refused to be worn down and give into him and allow the dogs to be put to death so his life would be more convenient.

Now I can take care of them guilt free and ease their pain till it is time.  Sure it is expensive but they are my children and my responsibility and I take that very seriously.

They have aged so much this past month and are both having difficulty getting around.  It freaks me out.

And I know it is ironic that I left my husband and I am not taking care of him which I vowed to do.  It bothers me a great deal.  But I did not know how to stay with him and keep myself and the dogs safe.

On Thinking Upon Worms

Oh Worm,
residing in dirt,
chewing life in a toothless mouth,
excreting pellet remains.


(An owl of a mouse,
sinew entwined with bone, ovals of indigestible waste:
Death Wreathes.)



Your trace,
compacts into tunnels,
surface to bedrock.
No eyes to see
no ears to hear
just vibrations of terror-
the mole victorious!




Oh Worm!
death surrounds you,
above,
below,
your suicide on cement,
your protracted body,
noose-like in death,
a sodden spasm.


The silence in thunder
and the whimper of lightening.


O Death, you worm,
you litter my path.
I dodge your corpses,

I tip toe
around your limp remains.
Ignore the fossil prints,
etched on cement.
You are everywhere I look.


You are the worm in gall,

the absinthe:
green death in carpets above.
The wormwood of dirt,
pattering the bronze,
dimming the lights,
making passages through bone.


Oh Worm!
Compost my body!
Make soil of my remains!
My breath, fleet feet,
you cannot catch,
coalesces in the heavens!

For all I am is dirt on earth
and breath in heaven above.

The rain that drives
to drown
lays on  amalgamated
surface,
the leachate formed by body and water,
rebirthing.

Oh Worm!  Oh Death!
Fear not thy grave!

Canning Memories

What good is it to open jars,

long sealed on pantry shelves?

Rimmed in dust

and encrusted in spider eggs?

If I took them off the cellar shelf-

(shuddering at the wispy touch of mummy silk)

would light reveal

preserves or rot?

Could I hear the hallow sound

if I pinged the lid with my knuckle?

Would the dull thud reveal

 sooty strings of decay?

A seal broken by the years?

a stench of you long gone in the ground….

Or could I hold it to a light,

swinging on the end of a chain,

where the memories would be rich ruby red.

I’d climb the planks

of stairs,

feel the breath of cellar rock

at the nape of my neck.

I’d stride to the light,

and hold the memories high.

Maybe then to examine for cracks,

leaks of air, bulging sides.

Sniff for foul.

Would the memories hold with examination?

Or would the first touch of air,

dust the insides,

just as I am sure your body now resides in dust…

I take the church key,

apply with surgical precision,

pry the lid back,

and wait…

Whiffs of crème de mint, Tangueray, Oreos,

flypaper spit, and cigarette smoke,

on a late night prairie train…

with the Perseids

showering us in August,

melting across a Kansas sky.

Then they are extinguished…

 burnt up….

Like we are long since dead,

you in your coffin,

and I in my glass jar memories…

Still playing with tornadoes

Still not liking it... More research? Leave it alone and come back?

It is a discipline. To write when you don't feel like writing. To write like taking batting practice. You don't always hit the ball. Ya strike out a lot. Kids played baseball so it is a metaphor in my life. 100 useless strikes can lead to a game winning home run. So this may just be a strike out.

White Sunlight


When the white sunlight
hits the hail,
scatters
it amongst the wall clouds
at the flank,
ping
ponging
off each other:
pinballs
chased by lightening.

In that engulfing gloom,
the bruised sky
full of broken veins
of light,
spills over,
pools,
into violently spinning air.


The fat finger of death
curls its way to dirt...
Mesmerized,
frozen in a hell like stance
by the power flashes,
I strained to glimpse that "finger of God".

Across the prairie
on internet waves
Doppler radar
pinging velocity
mountains no barrier
divide no hindrance
separation of East/West
dry line/ warm front
reaches to satellite space.

The neutral zone
inert,
a vacuum,
a silence
that is you.

No wind shear,
no super cells,
the dew point
inadequate
to produce.




The barrenness
of self,
cold and adrift
in space
where nothingness exists...

Rachel crying in the wilderness…

Finished the Adrienne Rich-My version of "Diving into the Wreck"

Shoveling the Wrack

First having read the Book of the Dead
and packed the sand bucket,
and tested the surface of the shovel
I put on
the waterproof slick coat
the chunky boots
the heart and polar scarf.
I am doing this
not like the Ugliest Catch
with their scraggy-haired crew
aboard tower tossed seas
but here alone.

There is a tangle
of kelp
the kelp is always there,
piled hazardously
at the high water mark

I know where it is from,
I've always known
somehow-
it reeks of death
and teams with orange plastic rope

I bend, touch the slime,
pulling strands of nylon, still
the tangle remains
the rot envelopes me
green bulbs
of kelp
bladder of ocean air

I scrabble
my scarf entwines weed
I burrow like dogs digging treasure
and no one tells me
where the sand
will begin...

At a glance the mass is green and then
it is kaki and then brown and then
beige I am smothering in sand and yet
my shovel is mightier
it strains my muscle with leverage
Till the ocean bubbles up
to collapse the hole
I am capable alone
To dig my hole and bury
this wrack of life.

Then: At the beginning
my life grew upward
surrounded by a forest of kelp
Many strands
among the rocks
and the weight
was buoyant in the waves,

I came to dig through the wrack
The blades are the experiences
The stipes are life.
I came to see what was salvageable
and what pheumatocysts intact
I grip the shaft of my shovel
tense my muscle
scooping and anticipating
treasures buried.

The life I lived for:
the wrack and not the sand
pieces of vegetation, not the ocean.

The seaweed flies swarm
upward toward my face
disturbed in their feeding
attracted by the rotten smell of kelp
their maggots gorge
on gelatinous fiber
eating away at membranes
of memories stored in gas-
filled bladders.

I spread the kelp
on the dry sand shelf, nudging it,
But the shovel is not enough-
My hands need to feel
The putrescence of life.
it coats my hands
as the flies invade the nose,
the mouth,
the ears.

It makes a bed when spread to sea,
a mattress to bear my weight
green strands grow from my sides
Medusa hair of kelp.

It’s hard to see
where my life begins or ends
on the high tide line.
The ocean nips
at my ankles.

Between the wrack and rock
below, above the wave
the harvest continues.
The sand, the kelp,
the shovel
Begin again
in a Book of Death
where my name is written.