Coming Back to Stoneybrae

Ten years have gone
no faster since, before
the brick bat slammed

our lives off orbit, lived
like innocents ‘til then.
Imagine ten

bucolic falls in yellow
leaves, nor‘easters
scouring the beaches

untouched by the weather
trudging steps in pantomime
amazed by life and crying.

When Ryan was fifteen
we brought two Huskies home
in January’s ice box winds

the panting little red dude
riding shotgun on my lap
his sister Ryan took to hold

fluff in gray and white in back.
Moments after being
inside our white limo

with good heater from Bavaria
Red began to pant, his tongue
so small, so lost in fur.

Coming back to Stoneybrae
winter’s children with us; Sunday
nightfall he was gone again.

Fifteen, he was a man
who I never saw enough
lived lives in parallel

missing minor rituals and clues
counting down to what
was going to kill him.

Wee things that they were
bounding, sliding hardwood floors
practicing for arctic flows


new kids home at midnight
I slept beside their cage
upon the kitchen floor.



Three years would pass, Mojo
grew into his own
grew a lion’s mane of red

ermine ladies lusted for
the leonine great movie star
Innisfree’s best offspring

running nights full out
signaling his sister trapped
the coon who’d taunted them

the clown in love with life
troubled only by our absence
and small white dogs he hated

moving shortly to the lake house
Ryan starting college, beach
time coming in October.



What kind of father lets
go his son like that to think
puppies could replace him?

The math of ten, a math
of mourning: one eighth
a lucky life, just past half
of Ryan’s, near

the whole of Mojo’s
yet he filed no protest
too much the gentle stoic.

Ten years too near the day
of Ryan’s, my handsome Red
with nothing left to comfort me


slow walks not even feeble
jumps for happiness, sank
his head between his paws.

Time seems an invention
an iron box with no escape.
October’s come again.