Blackboard covered with a dust
 of living chalk, live chaos-cloud
  wormed by turbulence: the rod glides

and the vet narrates shadows
 I can’t quite force into shape:
  His kidneys might . . . the spleen appears . . .

I can’t see what he sees, and so
 resort to simile: cloudbank, galaxy
  blurred with slow comings

and goings, that far away. The doctor
 makes appreciative noises,
  to encourage me;

he praises Beau’s stillness.
 I stroke the slope beneath
  those open, abstracted eyes,

patient, willing to endure whatever
 we deem necessary, while the vet
  runs along the shaved blonde

Today I’m herding the two old dogs
 into the back of the car,
  after the early walk, wet woods:

Beau’s generous attention must be
 brought into focus, gaze pointed
  to the tailgate so he’ll be ready to leap,

and Arden, arthritic in his hind legs,
 needs me to lift first his forepaws
  and then, placing my hands

under his haunches, hoist the moist
 black bulk of him into the wagon,
  and he growls a little

before he turns to face me,
 glad to have been lifted—
  And as I go to praise them,

as I like to do, the words
 that come from my mouth,
  from nowhere, are Time’s children,

as though that were the dearest thing
 a person could say.
  Why did I call them by that name?

They race this quick parabola
 faster than we do, as though
  it were a run in the best of woods,

run in their dreams, paws twitching
 —even asleep they’re hurrying.
  Doesn’t the world go fast enough?

We’re caught in this morning’s
 last-of-April rain, the three of us
  bound and fired by duration

—rhythm too swift for even them
 to hear, though perhaps we catch
 a little of that rush and ardor

—furious poetry!—
 the sound time makes,
  seeing us through.