Reading Milosz at Dawn

Under the first light of morning the snow is blue. 

The dog thinks he must go out.

Once outside, he barks choppy notes up and down a canine scale. 

With it he breaks the peace, shatters it,

seems to ask “Can I come in now?”  He adds to this staccato

a plaintive little howl, much different from the warning of

his deeper song,  “There’s a stranger in the yard!” 

He signs his request in the air with the cold, white vapor

of his whines, the second evidence of his desire. 

I need a break from him; he’s always scratching himself and licking,

crowding the foot of my bed, and snuffing around me

looking for a handout.   Indifferent this morning, I know

he can wait outside a little longer without any harm. 

He is not at peace indoors or out.

For him I rise early.  I put on the coffee.  No going back

to bed, so I read Milosz.  Under the small light above my book

with a calendar beneath it with my life pencilled in,

the poet fragments his faith in God on one page, then pieces it together

on another with the glue of no reason

apart from, he could not, that we do not,

endure without believing. 

Without belief in God,

he argues with himself and us, we

are each our own number of days,

we become only one of everything that is named. With our lives

we shout and sing against eternity, then we are shrugged off

with indifference.  Between the words I understand, God or no God,

we are like the flash of a falling star; from a great distance

silent and barely traceable, a part of something larger

that we cannot fully reflect. 

Beyond my window, the snow is dead white,

the sky is a glaze of colorless daylight.

The coffee has gone cold and my friend, the dog,

still hopes in my affection with his voice echoing

against the dark forest beyond the yard. The echo reminds him

that someone listens.  He remembers me

as the warmth of the kitchen,

as the full bowl in the corner,

as the salt of my palm,

as the one who croons his name and knows

the softness of his ear.  Will he remember

I've sent him out into the cold, made him wait

without answer for so long?

We both listen until

I am compelled to let him in.