Your elderly birddog

follows me from room to room, begging

me to become you. Nearly

forgotten in the wings, amid all this grief.

When your mind

was on its last legs,

she adopted me as master, giver

of small treats and long walks

At the shore. A predator wind takes up

unseen and ruthless, the irreversible gyre

beneath a trembling sky and dives

for surfacing morsels, sketches a sullen path

When nothing much

is all we can hope for

The tasteless bitch stretches

and takes another twist, nearly aloft,

before settling

onto this uncushioned floor

at my feet. Footloose

As ever, her eye on my hand, though

almost blind and deaf, trusting,

in your absence to find

some comfort, meaningless

perhaps, to her hollowing bones,

readying herself

to take flight.