Should You Turn Finally to Face Me

On the days we don’t talk, I watch the dog do foolish frantic loops alone around the park.

This morning, late brittle fall, she’s taken a stick and made it her treasure.

It’s far too big. One end’s lodged between her back teeth, the other dragging almost on the leaves, its weight causing her head to cock like I’ve just asked a question.

Just us today: no Brandy, the St. Bernard. No Tank, the obtuse beagle, who bays at ankles for attention.

Eight semis idle in the gravel lot of that factory across the street. I like to watch the steam leave its small skyline of pipes, which passenger planes pass through, leaving behind their little lines like a tennis ball’s two stripes.

(You’d say, I know, I’m being sentimental, and note how the factory always smells like beans, so in the right wind some abandon their stations, frisbees flung to the fence)

The dog won’t let me near her.

She trots toward me but, suddenly coy, dodges my outstretched hand. She’s forgotten glee again,

how the brisk air fills her flapping jowls, sprinting away after I’ve thrown it; how her hind legs strain to hold the flash of her, making her way back down the hill to me, her tail an exclamation.

Who am I to you? The gate’s latch glistens

from early morning’s rain, which pools in the lip of each blue bucket tipped on its side so the dogs won’t drink from it. They do make distinctions, whether or not I understand.

Most water’s just water to my dog, whose breathing I believe I’d know (like one sheet of tissue paper skimming another) if I heard it on the radio in a dream.

I worry a mud streak deeper into my coat sleeve.

A car door closes; we look, together, to the lot. As I turn, then, I hope

for your silver Endeavor but it’s just a gray sedan. Those two Great Danes again, Jackknife and Thunderclap, names stern as their chins, who gawk and putter more than play. The dog goes to greet them anyway, dropping her stick near the black metal bench as she passes.

She waits with her entire muzzle pushed between the fence’s links. Her tail, an even sway. But when the gate finally opens, click of nails against concrete, she wobbles once before backing away.

She slinks shyly to the park’s far end, lined with trees, when the first Dane’s unhooked from its brown leather leash.

Nine semis now, across the street.

I won’t call you today.

The dog pushes her nose now across the whole park to find her missing stick. She’s diligent, turning over stray balls and pinecones, foamy snot collecting under her nose from her allergies, her efforts.

The Danes putter behind at a cautious distance before a rope toy wins their dual attention.

(I sang it to the dog on the car ride over, all down 2nd Street and across the tracks—I won’t call her today, Fanny, I won’t call her today, I won’t, I’ll wait, I’ll wait—)

The dog tests dozens of other oak sticks, holding them each for a moment. She’s feeling for those familiar grooves she spent our whole morning making.

I pick a stick that looks the same (although we both know it isn’t) and toss it to the leaf pile ahead of her. I want to ease her grief. She doesn’t stop her search. I toss another. She sneezes. It’s no use.

She wants the one that knows her mouth by heart.