Margins

 

In the margins of my life I notice

that my poor dog is growing old.

Some days I look into her eyes and try

to rationalise the end of things,

(and the real end of things)

as we go about our common tasks.

 

Perhaps we both sense an approach of change,

together as we sometimes are

in the garden,

her, resting in the shade beneath my chair and I

wrestling with my book of words.

 

But she and I can understand nothing of it,

nothing of this single triple mystery,

this light turning into darkness, into light,

this silence into noise, into silence,

this unconnected cry of names and nouns

that trades no wisdom anywhere,

this other trinity ,

this tangled unity of birth, death and life.

 

No, nothing, I’m afraid, makes any sense to me

nor, I suspect, to her, asleep now beside me.

She and I are simply growing old in the

emptying margins of our lives.