Training

The puppy won’t stop eating rocks and moss.

Sometimes I pry open her mouth to find

whole splinters of bark on her pink tongue. We try

to train her how to sit, how to stick out

her paw when we ask. When she poops in the house,

we bring it to the yard so she knows where to go

next time. And later, after it’s dried in the sun, after the flies

have had their fill, we scoop it up and throw it in the woods.

Here, the world is perpetual March,

and we love a dog as if that’s the only thing we can do, as if

death cannot touch this slice of New England, the trees

growing a canopy of shade just for us.

Yesterday, we strapped the smallest life jacket

to her furry body, took her swimming for the first time.

We watched her paddle from the shore to the center of the lake,

then back again until she grew tired. And last night

while we argued about things that won’t

matter in a month, he was still petting the puppy’s wet head,

and I cried like I’d never known a kindness

so pure and gentle as that, as a pat on the head

for doing nothing but existing. I wouldn’t

call this jealousy, but there is no word

in my human tongue that seems appropriate.

It’s the feeling of all the stones I swallowed in my youth

growing  jagged in my belly. And I scratch

the surface of my skin with any sharp thing

I can find to cut them out.