January 3: Searching for a Poem, John Updike, "Dog's Death"

I have been searching for a poem to post for a couple hours now.  I've combed through several anthologies.  For some reason, no poet or poem has rung my bell this evening.

My wife just sat down next to me, and I explained my dilemma.  She said, "Oh, just pick a damn poem and get it over with."

That is exactly what Saint Marty is going to do.

Dog's Death

by:  John Updike

She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog!  Good dog!"

We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
And her heart was learning to lie down forever.

Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
We found her twisted limp but still alive.
In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried

To bite my hand and died.  I stroked her warm fur
And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
Nevertheless she sank and, stiffening, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor
To a newspaper carelessly left there.  Good dog.

 

Good dog poem