​POETRY 

"You came at age two
​already named Beau"
                                          Photo by Weebly.com                                             

Elegy for Beauregard  *
by Dan Liberthson

                                1

​​Open the door and feel it—whirling terrier rush of joy.
Worst, that instant of certainty
when hope flares only to go out.
 
My friend Regina says such ghosts
comfort: they mean the spirit lives.
Her English terrier,
ashes in a vase by the fireplace,
still jumps into her bed at night
 
I think she’s nuts.
Spiteful, these mirages,
nothing more,
melting nests of wasps
to sting your heart--
and this spirit business?
A placebo for cancer.
 
Perhaps because she lost
in the ovens of the dark land
so many she imagines
loving without reserve
(never having known them)
for her it comes easy,
to think the presence of the dead
friendly.
 
But I have never lost anyone
I'd admit to loving
without also hating
except this small dog.

                             2

​You came at age two
already named Beau
or was it Boo—the writing
was sloppy on the adoption paper.
But I knew you should be Beauregard,
handsome one whose bedroom eyes
enticed a treat, a walk, a butt-rub
no matter how tired I was.
You sat regally erect,
ears on permanent alert,
white diamond on your chest,
Prince Beauregard.
 
You had flaws,
but secret, nurtured apart
from the general gaze
or casual caress.
Felt closely, odd cones
dense as bones
studded your head,
samples of the varied lumps
your body grew, each original as you.
 
For so long all were benign--
nothing to worry about,
the vets said
but they forewarned me
of what one day would be,
the flaw that let in death.
Sometimes I wanted them cut out,
as if that could help.
Sharp beneath my fingers
as your breath stopped,
these mispositioned nipples
(on your belly were none)
were my last sense of you.
 
Scratch behind your ears
in those final days
and you rumbled
like a giant cat.
We thought it was pleasure,
our charming cat-dog,
not that lump turned traitor
wolfing your thyroid--
cruel choke collar
tightening.

                             3

​I can’t get rid of it,
this sense you are waiting
when I come home--
held back by an unseen leash,
some thing commanding stay
louder than I can wish come.
 
The forbidden rooms
are least lonely because
you were never there
so neither is the vacancy you left.
You would run
halfway, two-thirds up the stairs,
knowing the second story was
out of bounds but unable to resist,
afraid we’d miss the evening walk.
As I climb the stairs now,
you fade. Turn the corner at the top
and I am safe from haunting.
But I can’t come down.
 
You were my guide, my master.
You taught me how to breathe,
to rejoice, and now
to grieve.

                       4

​“Dog with chocolate ears,” Kathy said
as they brought the sedative
before they took you in
for the final shot.
And I had to scream “Stop!
Don’t you know,” I couldn’t say,
“you're tearing strips off me?”

                        5

​You were so patient,
sitting still far longer
for your portrait
than most dogs would,
wanting to be free
but sensing what we wanted
and giving it.
 
“Stay,” we’d command, and you’d give
a puzzled look that said
“if you insist, but whatever for?”
Now, if it would work, we’d shout
“Come,” but your picture rightly
would return that quizzical look.

                        6

​You hated your own kind,
attacked every other dog,
friendly or not, remembering perhaps
when we beat off three setters
who mugged you at the beach.
You cowered beneath your leash
and I’ll bet vowed never again,
for then began your anti-dog crusade.
 
It’s so hard to think of you
as anything but knowing,
deciding in a conscious way,
even if your every act
was simply adaptation.
Worthless at fetch unless
the thrown thing was edible,
you’d glance sidelong, eloquent
with suspicion, saying “if you won’t
chase that ball why should I?
And bring it? Come on!”
 
But your paws were all white
on brown, soft-furred legs:
“Little booties, four white booties,”
the old lady crooned as if to a baby
as you passed without interest,
ear cocked vaguely, wondering
why the fuss.
 
In the tonglen technique,
Buddhists take in the world’s grief,
transform it to love
and send it out again.
You had your own way:
your ears, straight up
(natural or cropped no one knew)
like the spine in yoga,
were swiveling radar screens 
that took in grief and everything else
and sent out attitude.

                              7

​So many memories:
Your crazy-ass crooked tail,
a lateral question mark
hooked left and refusing,
stubborn as your terrier brain,
any attempt to straighten.
Beard edged with dogfood
you rubbed off on the couch,
wiry hair sprung like a Mohawk
all along your spine.
Only fire and the vet scared you.
Lead you before a cozy hearth
or in for a routine check
and you became
a trembling, drooling mess.
 
The German woman at the kennel
said “Ziss dogk hass a screw loose,
und not chust lately—he vaz born zat vay”
and when we came to bring you home
you’d become Screwloose Lautrec,
unhinged, crazy-dog expressionist,
painting leaps and spins in air,
Kandinsky orbits of delight.
 
“What kind of dog is that?”
people wondered as we passed
so often that we made up a breed,
Tasmanian Goat Hound:
the one who broke the mold,
who was only himself,
but also everything else--
cat-dog, fish-dog, devil,
wild-haired rocker,
the one who came,
the one who wouldn’t,
the one who insisted,
the one who is gone.

                          8

​The silence is so oppressive
not because there is no sound
but because it doesn’t include your silence.
Your presence has become an absence,
that absence again a presence
that eats away everything, like acid,
and leaves an empty, smoking hole.

                           9

​Young, fresh from that first
Nazi master or mistress,
you feared nearly everything,
cringed your way through life,
but then were born again,
borrowing our confidence
(or fear), and began to lunge
at whatever moved—dog, cat, human--
until, grown old, you knew it all belonged
and could be trusted, so you changed
the lunge for the nuzzle.

                           10

​Cramped by the walls
of the pricey heated bed
we bought for your arthritis,
you stuck with your stained blue cushion
and treated yourself by basking
nose-first in the wall-vent’s hot stream.
Now you’ve escaped any constraint,
and lie perhaps alongside canis major,
with all Space in which to live your death,
but no heat in that utter chill.
 
Outside, deep fog drips like rain,
the San Francisco murk
you plowed like a boat through spray,
happy to be cool
and fastened to the scent,
towing me behind.
 
How can I find a hold
against this grief
sucking me away?
Feel the riptide
and dare to tell me
this was only a dog!
 
Unable to stop loving,
even certain you are nowhere
I must imagine you somewhere--
crazy hair stirring in the wind,
following your nose
up your favorite trail
and off into the trees.
I believe in nothing
I have not witnessed
yet I seem to have no choice
than believe in you.

​*Author’s Note: Adapted from the poem of the same title in Animal Songs (2010) by Dan Liberthson.

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​Dan Liberthson was born in Rochester, New York and attended Northwestern University and SUNY at Buffalo (PhD, English). He has retired from a career as a medical writer, and lives in San Francisco and Cottage Grove, Oregon. He has published five books of poetry and has published individual poems in anthologies and journals, including The Haight-Ashbury Literary Journal, South Coast Poetry Journal, Elysian Fields Quarterly, Chaminade Literary Review and Triggerfish. He was Secretary of the Oregon Poetry Association (2019-2022), and took second place in the William Stafford Memorial Award Poetry Contest (2020) and the Maine Poets Society Contest (2022). He also published The Bluejay Contrivance, a spy novel, and The Golden Spider, a middle-grade fantasy novel. For more information, visit liberthson.com.

Other works in this issue:
Poetry
​A Rochester, New York Childhood

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