CARLO AND ME

For Carlo, Emily Dickinson’s dog

We ramble now through Emily’s afterlife,
carom through her fields, rich in furred
company. As every dyslexic knows, 
God is a Dog with black fur, dark eyes,
and the tender slobber a toddler could love.

We all inhabit Emily’s attic now,
sitting above her eyebrows
as she dissolves into the living word.
She saw the Sun best, traveling
into its heart, in hers the molten void, 
her postmortem a mere romp.

We can share her emptiness 
running with them to loft
over a log, her gamboling duet with Dog,
in a field, her shaggy angel, Carlo
Keeping her half in a body 
born near-invisible. Death, die! she said, 
and–Poof!–in her it did.

Rachel Dacus has published seven novels and four poetry collections, with recent work in Amethyst Review, Eclectica, and Tipton Poetry Journal. Her poetry also appears in the anthologies Fire and Rain: Ecopoetry of California and Nūr Mélange: A Ghazal Anthology. She lives with her architect husband and Silky Terrier in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she writes and raises funds for good causes.