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.
