Emry Trantham

Isn’t It Pretty to Think So

That it never did depend upon the old dog,
a hushed heap of amber beside of the road.
That after everything and before everything

else—underneath the single sinking star reflected
by the river that raged herself to sleep,
in the hidden pocket where he closed his eyes—

that everything was okay. That the glass grains
still followed gravity, that the silver light
of the floating lamp showed his shadow standing,

and that the perfect space was two rows
into the orchard and eleven paces
from the hives. That the old dog wasn’t left

for dead beside the apples, unburied.
That the buzzards didn’t disappear
him, piece by piece. That there’s a story

on the page after this one in which
you remembered his name,
and when you called, you called him home.

That you rubbed his ears on the porch,
beneath the rattling moths, and the speeding
yellow headlights never even grazed him.

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Emry Trantham is an English teacher in Western North Carolina, where she is raising a family and writing poems. Her poetry has been published in Tar River Poetry, Carolina Quarterly, Booth, Okay Donkey, Cold Mountain Review and others. She was also a 2019 Gilbert-Chappell Emerging Poet.