DOG POEM

On this day 11 years ago my father died.
I watched him refuse death.
There was no reason to share this.
It was an indignity.
There is no refusing.
The brain stops even if until the last it performs miraculously the
duty of remaining illuminated.
He died on an evening like this warm one in November.
Loose leaves blew around the parking lot as I drove away from the
place of his death, a hospital.
I smoked with my mother's second sister just beyond the gate of the house my parents bought, owned and lived in together for twenty-six years.
I lived in that house, but did not live there then.
We smoked and a reporter came to the gate and asked her
questions.
She was ashamed.
There was no need to answer her.
We did not answer.
We smoked.
The night was strangely warm, like so many peculiar Halloweens,
November in just a few days.
Autumn quiets or casts itself between the warm parts of air.
It fills spaces of warmth with cold.