Do You Love Me?

She’s twelve and she’s asking the dog,

who does, but who speaks

in tongues, whose feints and gyrations

are themselves parts of speech.

They’re on the back porch

and I don’t really mean to be taking this in

but once I’ve heard I can’t stop listening. Again

and again she asks, and the good dog

sits and wiggles, leaps and licks.

Imagine never asking. Imagine why:

so sure you wouldn’t dare, or couldn’t care

less. I wonder if the dog’s guileless brown eyes

can lie, if the perfect canine lack of abstractions

might not be a bit like the picture books

she ‘read’ as a child, before her parents’ lips

shaped the daily miracle of speech

and kisses, and the words were not lead

and weighed only air, and did not mean

so meanly. ‘Do you love me?’ she says

and says, until the dog, sensing perhaps

its own awful speechlessness, tries to bolt,

but she holds it by the collar and will not

let go, until, having come closer,

I hear the rest of it. I hear it all.

She’s got the dog’s furry jowls in her hands,

she’s speaking precisely

into its laid-back, quivering ears:

‘Say it,’ she hisses, ‘Say it to me.’