Grow up with a soldier, and by extension
grow up with disturbed nights, and a man
old before his time.
There's a song in the brandy of his eyes,
and I've been humming the melody
since I was a child.

When they pinned the medal to his chest
he winced, like they'd pierced his skin,
or even his heart.
The arms that reached out went ignored:
he could be a father or a soldier, never
the two together.

You chain a dog to a fence for one, two,
twenty-four hours, one, two, seven days,
out in the bitter cold.
The freezing turns its nose from wet black
to dry pink; the leash constricts in the frost:
one day it will break.

Sat shrunken and silent in the front seat
of the truck, rain pelting against the roof
and the windscreen.
Headlights are little help in this darkness,
but an old soldier's presence can fight
a daughter's fears.

A rotten fence and a rusted link chain
will break before the heart of a dog,
and it will run.
Through the driving run it will run,
and the headlights will reflect in two
fearless bright eyes.

The truck will swerve as it bolts across,
and the soldier will remember the dust
and roadside bombs.
The soldier will reach for his daughter's
hand to comfort himself, and I will not
realise why.

Tail lights flashed orange in the empty dark
as we searched for the aimless animal,
soaked to the skin.
Three blanket-wrapped bodies made it home
that night, and I glimpsed my father free from
the shade of war.

The wife of a tired soldier will cry as he does,
and wake in sweat-drenched sheets whispering
words of comfort.
She will cry tears of joy as rain drips from his hair
and she realises that he has finally come home,
and he smiles.

The dog came to us grey, and turned white
as the spring came in. The soldier faded too,
heart warm again.
Chain a dog outside and leave it bereft of love
or compassion, and it will find common ground
with an old soldier.

If fluent English is something my dog possessed and could use I think she would say:
Sometimes my human starts breathing really fast, she slams her hands against the floor and she makes strange sad noises, I don't know what to do so I bring her my ball
Sometimes my human does not sleep at night, instead she stares at the ceiling, I hold myself close to her, so when she does fall asleep, I'm there
Sometimes my human gives me bones, a few of them I save for later
Sometimes my human comes home and does not speak to me, instead she stares at walls and sobs, I lick her feet and sometimes it makes her smile
Sometimes my human gives me tasty human food
On my birthday I get brightly colored parcels, there is paper I tear with my teeth and inside there is always something fun or tasty
Sometimes my human does not give me as much affection as I would like, but I love my human and she is mine
I used to have two humans, one has gone but I still remember her and I think my other human does too

After My Little Black Dog Died of Melanoma.
After the Lumps on Her Small Brittle Body Slowly
Burned to a Pile of Ash in the Vet’s Office.  After My Step-Father
Drove in His Ostentatious Truck to Pick Up Her Remains.  After I Cried
in My Dorm Room and Tried Not to Wake My Roommate.  
Realization that My Loss Does Not Make Me Different.  There Are
Graveyards That Span For Miles and They Are Filled With More
Dead Bodies Than I Have Ever Seen.  There Are Hundreds of
Thousands of Children in the Foster Care System That Have
Never Met Their Parents or Maybe They Did and it Just Didn’t Work Out.
Kids Who Might Have Lived With Their Terminally Ill Parent(s) For Years
Not Just Days.  Kids Who Never Sat in the Opened Up Trunk of Their
Mother’s Black Nissan Pathfinder at the Drive-In Movies.  Kids Who Lived Too Far From Their Too Old Grandparents or Who Lived Too Far From Their Too Dead Grandparents.  Kids Who Were Never Told Not to Throw Snowballs Because There Might be Big Chunks of Ice in Them.  Kids Who
Never Had a Childhood Dog to Cry Over.  Kids Who
Don’t Like to Read Because They Were Never Read
Bedtime Stories When They Were Younger.  Kids Whose
Mothers Never Called Them Tweetie or Pumpkin or Honey or ***.  
Kids That Were Not Told to Just Go to the Bathroom When
Their Tummies Hurt Instead of the Health Room.  Kids Who Never
Listened to the Spice Girls’ Album Spice World on Cassette on the
Way to the Store.  Kids Who Never Got a Peach Drink Out of a Vending Machine at the Pick’N’Save on 27th  Street and Still Don’t Know
Exactly What 50¢ Peach Drink Their Mother Bought For Them.  
There Are Thousands of Dogs Euthanized Each Day Because of
How Sick They Are or Because They Were at a Shelter For Far Too Long
or Because They Are a Pitbull or a Rottweiler or Some Other
Irrationally Feared and Disliked Dog Breed.  We Didn’t Euthanize My
Stage-Four-Cancer-Stricken Dog or Even Get Her Treatment Beyond
Pain Medicine Because We Were Selfish.  We Do a Lot of Things Because
We Are Selfish.  We Waited Five Days to Pull the Plug on My Vegetable
Mother Because We Were Waiting For a Miracle That We Knew Would
Never Happen Because She Stopped Breathing the Moment the
Aneurysm Burst.  My Sister is Getting Married in June and My
Grandfather is Going to Walk Her Down the Aisle in My Mother’s
Place.  My Grandparents Had to Move In With My Sister After My
Grandmother Fell Down Too Many Times and Didn’t Take Her Health
Problems Serious Enough.  There Are Repercussions For Thinking
You Are Safe When You Are Really Not.

Miss that dog
Like the sky misses the stars
I said I miss the dog
Like the sky misses the stars
I miss petting her in the morning
And saying
“Good morning Mac”