J. T. Ledbetter

Someone must have seen an old dog dragging its broken body through the wet grass; someone should have known it was lost, drinking from the old well, then lifting its head to the wind off the bottoms, and someone might have wanted that dog trailing its legs along the ground like vines sliding up the creek searching for sun; but they were not there when the dog wandered through Turley’s Woods looking for food and stopped beneath the thorn trees and wrapped its tail around its nose until it was covered by falling leaves that piled up and up until there was no lost dog at all to hear the distant voice calling through the timber, only a tired heart breathing slower, and breath, soft as mist, above the leaves.

The letter said you died on your tractor crossing Shoal Creek. There were no pictures to help the memories fading like mists off the bottoms that last day on the farm when I watched you milk the cows, their sweet breath filling the dark barn as the rain that wasn’t expected sluiced through the rain gutters. I waited for you to speak the loud familiar words about the weather, the failed crops— I would have talked then, too loud, stroking the Holstein moving against her stanchion— but there was only the rain on the tin roof, and the steady swish-swish of milk into the bright bucket as I walked past you, so close we could have touched.