Anecdote of a Black Chow

The black chow
was his last dog.
No more dogs
to love; its memory
lives in his sadness.
A vestigial dog
haunts his stoop.
Its bark wakes him
from an afternoon nap.
He finds stiff
black hairs
on splintered
hooks splitting
away from the frame
of the screen door.
He senses its body
in the shadowed room;
he smells its oily pelt.
Its black tongue
lolls from its snout
at dusk
when the snails
cross the sidewalk
to the rose garden.