Thick black nylon pulled taut across my metal frame,
I create stairs, easily folded, stored in trunk or cargo hold.

Open me & let my rubber handles hold firm the car;
I am made to extend–unfurl myself, give time.

My dog was twelve when we met & together we felt
steaming rain drops, late-winter snow dustings,

red clay stained her paws & the snaking garden
hose washed them white again;

she lingered under mountain laurel’s lush umbrella,
limped along butterfly-strewn riverbanks, flickering gemstones among mud;

moseyed through cow pastures & spring calf slow-danced,
lumbered wooded & grassy trails, nose slowly seeking as though part divining rod.

What I had seen of the world appeared conditional,
but her mother’s-love heart led me

until her halting, wobbling legs could no longer climb.
We lay side-by-side, our bodies collapsed together

on our last car ride to the farm– her gentle paw newly heavy–
no need of me, but still I was there.

I saw her lowered into the summer-warmed Earth, enveloped in loam;
I was taken away, pressed to the cold basement floor,

covered in cobwebs, dust, no dirt
from recent outings, no sprinkling of soft fur.

But from above, I have heard a skittering, sliding puppy dance gradually slow;
I do not know if I am ready to learn to love the warm, rough pads of another old dog.

Nevertheless, I will creak & click the rust from these hinges,
take her to sniff the good smells of the world, feel life in her limbs,

& when finally her weathered paws lose their feel for adventure,
find comfort as turned earth hugs her into its own welcoming heart.

---

Riley Dishner-Brown is a writer and stay-at-home-mom from Virginia.  Her poems have been published in The Loch Raven Review and Belladonna’s Garden Literary Magazine, and she has been recently nominated for the Pushcart Prize.