A Dog in Heaven

 A Dog in Heaven

My wife wants to rejoin Maisie in heaven,

but I offer little encouragement--doubt is

a lifelong habit I’m not about to shake,

though both her tears and my old age 

have softened the edges: I’m unsure

of anything anymore, let alone heaven,

and even less about the afterlife of dogs;

but she remembers walks along the bluffs,

the way that Scottie adored a picnic,

recalls her futile barking at deer, 

the much-feared encounters with a skunk,

which, happily, never took place,

the sweet puppy smells the first night

that we brought her home to the cabin,

and that warm, furry presence sleeping

between our legs on cold January nights.  

Jerrie talks about Maisie’s wagging tail,

her tireless, crazy love for tug of war, 

how the dog seemed to relish travel,

its rewards of rest areas, motel rooms,

and old pals to greet at our destination;

and her fondest wish is to replay 

all those moments, but she’d settle

for any future time she could share

with that small dog bouncing beside her;

she can describe what they would do 

in the most careful details, no less real

than the days when she talked with Maisie, 

and her yearning is so earnest, so tangible   

that it assumes the mantle of reality--

the best-conceived of my realisms totters

before such fervor, and it is now clear

to me and all my rationality

that no philosophy can refute a dog.  

Second Place Award, Pennsylvania Poetry Society, 2020