By DANIEL TOBIN
Like a dog truant among the tended plots
it turns back toward us a considerate eye
as though sensing the disquiet of our being
lost here among all the unfamiliar graves
that would be landmarks proving the right way
if this were the way we’d believed it to be.
It’s not. But the animal roving its own track
through the widening arboreal splendor
of these stones, obelisks, and mausoleums,
appears to know every blooming memorial,
each keenly placed plastic bouquet, as we ask
why your parents’ snug of lawn eludes us
among the bough-vaulted rows of dominoes.
No kindred of an earth, it must stalk alone,
or scavenge what the visitants leave behind;
or bird’s eggs, rabbits, the odd neighborhood
cat wandered over from some nearby home.
Its tail affects the lilt of a semaphore; its pelt
a finish of rust in sunlight. When it trots
away we notice the curb has been remade, or
a new curb fashioned here to look like slate—
the lane we missed because no longer there.
Walking this newly seeded ground, we see
where fresh beds now border against
the old, the forked tree, the familiar granite marker
with the names, the names of those before,
and that glossy-gray patch for two to come—
like denizens this former road will welcome,
razed for needed space, a little more room,
a little more green for the grave fox to roam.
Daniel Tobin is the author of nine books of poems. His poetry has won many awards, as well as fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. His latest books are From the Distances of Sleep, The Odeon: Essays on Poetry, and Dusk, Empire: New and Selected Poems, 1987–2024.
