Some Kind of Beginning

The alfalfa fields had their own luster 
and, besides, no one came 
for any harvest. Instead, as children, we drifted 
in a golden sea with monarchs, my brother waving
his net like a sail. We floated past 
clumps of aspen, tiny islands; 
other children, on swing sets and trampolines, 
were strange natives whose language 
we chose not to utter. Little pilgrims 
in our faded jeans and Keds 
we navigated past our abandoned tree house, 
past the chokecherries oozing 
their droplets of blood (the sticky splendor 
my mother caught and wrung 
into jelly, jam, syrup), past 
the knotted tree trunk crouched 
like a lost ogre trying to hide at the foot 
of the mountains, until we reached it:
the grave. And here we stopped, 
my brothers and me, 
to run, dance, laugh over the tombstone 
of an almost forgotten dog. Rather, 
meaning his name. Meaning 
I’d rather bury my bones in the dark. Or 
I’d rather lie here asleep. A tiny tombstone 
reading: “Rather, a dog who deserved 
far more than he got.” Then, 
in the quiet of chewing 
our sandwiches, swallowing 
green punch, we sensed the spirit 
of the great dog rise up 
and beg. With a reverence 
befitting our Sunday School lessons, 
we listened, knowing of God 
and the afterlife, the inevitable judgment 
of all creatures. But even then 
at the mouth of the canyon 
the bulldozers started their engines. 
The alfalfa fields trembled. 
I think it was then, without our knowing it, 
that mortality came to us. 
Dirt over a rough grave. The whir 
of approaching machinery. 
The anguish of swallowing it all for lunch 
with so much laughter to spare.