Unmoored
This is not a poem about love gone. You
are still here but elsewhere with regular
frequency. An absence, not unlike the moon
whose pale face fades and darkens. Or
the black-hooded oriole that returns
each spring. You are constant in the leaving.
Constant in the return. The ailing dog doesn’t
know this. She pads to the far side of the bed,
lays her head underneath, sheltered, as if
by the body not there. Home again, it’s as though
you have risen, Lazarus-like, from the far shore
she cannot breach. As though she believes
she had lost, then found you, unrepentant
prodigal, whose return elicits a glory chorus,
the crash and shriek of it tilting our musts,
our shoulds, out the raw pulp of our hearts.
This dog with eyes for a select few, made
of spare parts, who lies, paws dipped,
in the forest fish pond under redwoods,
her dart, and flash, and silky coat all her
own: herder, worrier, protector, sentinel,
who bore with a daughter’s sweet torture—
tongue grabs, tail yanks, body flips when
dog’s instinct resists the body’s brash flip—
and bedded down daily outside her door when
she too set sail. Love is a tragedy in the making.
All our next-times, the someday reunions, keep
our grief at sea. And when the dog, any day
now, leaves off the food, the weight, the settle
beside bed’s far side, you will wish she hadn’t
gone. You will look beside the bed, open
the front door, remember the paws wiped dry
from the tiptoe dunk into arboreal pond
and feel the absence, that acute loss, constant
in the body, constant in its return.
• • •
Julia Chiapella’s poetry has appeared in Avatar Review, Edison Literary Review, I-70 Review, The MacGuffin, Midwest Quarterly, OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters, The Opiate Magazine, Pirene’s Fountain, and The Wax Paper, among others. She co-founded Santa Cruz Writes to enhance literary opportunities for Santa Cruz County, California, residents. The retired director of the Young Writers Program, which she established in 2012, she received the Gail Rich Award in 2017 for creative contributions to Santa Cruz County.