Euphoria

 

You sit in your garden with your old black Labrador and a handful of ideas,

Romantic or older paganisms—chaff for your notebook,

Alert to the ink in your pen and the rough hewn blood

Of memoir. There’s just shade enough for two.

You write a line about love. You cup your hands

around your dog’s kind face.

 

Soon your dog will take a long journey.

Soon you will also rest in the earth.

“Decide to be happy,” you say, and he looks at you

as if the first streak of the coming night was his notion,

as if life and death were nothing more

than the shivering aspen leaves.