Christmas Morning 2014

I took the old husky

to the beach.

It was probably our last romp

of 10,000.

Ten thousand!

Rain ripped through Astoria.

I love rain; not this time.

The beach was different.

Fresh erosion sheared the dunes.

We’d have to climb down.

I wasn’t sure she’d make it.

Erosion is like that.

Erode—to erode—an action verb.

Sonny eroded the coarse, uncaring

contours of my heart in our 17 years together.

We made our way south.

Huge piles of kelp looked

like dead kraken.

I took photographs.

One might be the last one.

A rainbow appeared.

It seeped through the gray.

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

They write poems about these moments.

Sonny ate up the sand with gusto.

There was gusto in my grief.

We left.

I stopped at a convenience store in Warrenton,

for wine or coffee.

I don’t remember.

I was still reeling from the Christmas rainbow.

A student of mine was eating a convenience-store burrito

for breakfast with his mother and sister on Christmas morning.

I wished him a “Merry Christmas!”

He wouldn’t look at me.

I put my hand on his shoulder.

He didn’t introduce me.

He gave a funny laugh.

To our left, an old man played

blues on harmonica.

He played the blues,

I had the blues,

my student lived the blues,

and Sonny was named for a great bluesman.