Housestanding

I don’t know this house.
I enter lightly, with a nod
to those who came before
me, to those to whom this
house has always belonged.

If the dogs of this house
are aware I am a nomad
they do not give tell. They
politely pretend to know
me, to know the dog that

I pretend is mine, who is
mine in name and jangling
tags, but not of heart. He
pretends he is only passing
time with me. I do not know

how to get him to love me.
Already he is paying more
attention to the dogs of the
house than he has to me in
too much time. I had hoped

housesitting with my big dog,
and dogsitting for someone
else’s dogs, might put the spark
back in our relationship. Bark,
we have plenty of.

They are off, all three, wagging,
sniffing, clicking through the
old Cape Cod house. Newly
minted friends. Even dogs
are better at this than I.

I wander through the house.
I find I cannot sit. There is so
much to see. Colored glasses
lining windowsills, perfume
bottles, carved wood, garlic.

I stand and wait: housestanding.
I watch my dog as he whines
and pads from room to room.
Nothing I say comforts him. It is
only the calm of the house dogs

that eventually brings him to a halt,
persuades him, all is, in fact, okay
enough. I reach to stroke his shepherd’s
face. He allows me this, but is aloof.
He can take me or leave me now.

My dead dog belonged with me,
I with him. My old red dog, unable
to make this trip, is with my mother,
who dogsits her, housesits for me.
I think of them, sitting companionably

on the small sofa where my first dog
was finally put to sleep in my arms.
My old red dog loves me as I love her,
but something is wrong, she cannot
see, she is ill. I cannot bear the thought

of losing her—she, my second dog, my
first daughter, the death row dog we
adopted as a wedding gift to ourselves.
When I return home the vet will ask me
what I want to do. My red dog’s life thumps

its tail once, twice, in my lap. Maybe I
expect too much? That my third dog should
love me like the first two? I am a beggar.
I call his name, the big beast. He flicks
his glance in my direction, then away.

I am still standing when the little
white dog here rings a hanging
bell with its nose. I open a door
and the two house dogs and my
big shepherd run outside to explore

the fenced yard. I keep my hand
on the door, unsure whether or not
to close it, to turn my back on the
fun. I am embarrassed by all the
waiting I do, by all the longing,

by all the yearning. It is unseemly,
to lose a job. It is humiliating, to
lose a marriage. But to lose the
loyalty of a dog? Unfathomable.
I fucked this up as well? My dog?

Children, house, future—I tick off
what remains of my life to lose.
When I was in college, I was certain
everything missing could be found,
everything lost, reclaimed. No longer

am I so sure anything belongs to me,
or that I belong to anything, anywhere,
anyone. Through the kitchen window
and its array of sill treasures unfamiliar,
I spy my big dog, sniffing a tree.

I stay standing. The house of glass
and tugboats and mermaids and dogs
turns around me, slowly. When the
three amigos prance back inside, I
tell them I will build them a fire,

will make this house of not mine
warm for us all. But they pay no attention
to my kindling, my inexpert snapping of
fatwood, the curling of the newsprint.
Fine. I busy myself, preparing for a life

of busying only myself, as losses mount.
I jab the poker into the heart of brown bark
and am amazed that it remains whole
in the flames, does not shatter. I stand
before my own fire, but I cannot get warm.