DIVERSE VERSE

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 youngsters 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 sank and, stiffened, disappeared.

Back home, we found that in the night her frame,

Drawing near to dissolution, had endured the shame

Of diarrhoea and had dragged across the floor

To a newspaper carelessly left there.  Good dog.