A Good Dog

It was white steam curling over the pot’s lip,

the bumping cobs of corn bobbing in bubbles,

the thick, sun-warm, bleeding slices

of Beef Steak Tomatoes and, especially,

the yellow butter’s languid pose

 

that signaled summer was finally here.

The previous November just days

after his twenty third birthday my brother was found

under a pile of decomposing leaves face

down in a deserted Missouri wood.

 

We heard it first on the St. Louis news:

After a month missing from a St. Charles’s Radio Shack,

two employees found shot in back of head,

execution style, motive still not known

for the lunch time abduction.

 

For the first time that summer

Dad phoned Mom to “put the water on”

he was coming home with freshly picked sweet corn.

It was the only time I remember Mom forgot

to add her secret spoon of sugar to the pot.

 

We sat at the table closer than normal

around a small basket of wilting memories

gnawed by a nagging emptiness

not discussing that which

never made sense…

 

When Sister, our dog, snuck in to beg the summer food

she only just sniffed anyway, one stern look from Dad

and she sulked to her place by the kitchen door.

She laid down in trained disappointment,

persisting, almost human, a good dog.