When the phone rings in the night to tell him someone’s died
not unexpectedly, and without giving trouble,
he thinks as he lies down of the hurt red setter
he had to shoot, what, forty years ago? His heart flinches again.
His house flowering quietly around him
in this contented suburb, he lies awake until
the trees step out of the shadows. Fifty.
He wonders what he did for the rest of that day
and why he’s never seen, these forty years,
those trees with the ripped and shaggy bark
and under it, the silky heifer skin. That sky
so clean and glittering
it makes you want to weep.
*This poem first appeared in Divan 2 1999
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What a wonderful poem! And especially meaningful to me. My mother would have hated to think her dying caused anybody any trouble. It’s the opposite of the Dylan Thomas poem, ‘Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night’ – or is it?
Thanks Dorothy. It’s an old poem as you can see by its original publication date. A great thing about a blog is that these things can get a second life. It’s interesting that you focus on the “without giving trouble” aspect of it, moved by your own experience. For me it’s more about the way death, which in the doctor’s case is just part of his everyday work, can suddenly make you aware of the course of your own life, and of experiences which, for whatever reason, have pierced you in such a way that they always stay with you.
Very nice, and well deserving of a second life.
And perhaps there’s something about that particular death that brings up these memories.
Or I suppose the fact that shooting the dog has turned out to be a presage of the life he’s had, dealing in life and death every day and learning to suppress the emotions associated with it.