DOG'S DEATH

                      by John Updike
     She must have been kicked unseen or brushed by a car.
     Too young to know much, she was beginning to learn
     To use the newspapers spread on the kitchen floor
     And to win, wetting there, the words, "Good dog! Good dog!"
     We thought her shy malaise was a shot reaction.
     The autopsy disclosed a rupture in her liver.
     As we teased her with play, blood was filling her skin
     And her heart was learning to lie down forever.
     Monday morning, as the children were noisily fed
     And sent to school, she crawled beneath the youngest's bed.
     We found her twisted and limp but still alive.
     In the car to the vet's, on my lap, she tried
     To bite my hand and died. I stroked her warm fur
     And my wife called in a voice imperious with tears.
     Though surrounded by love that would have upheld her,
     Nevertheless she sand and, stiffening, disappeared.
     Back home, we found that in the night her frame,
     Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame
     Of diarrhea and had dragged across the floor
     To a newspaper carelessly left there. Good dog.

Go to more poems