She is looking at me–
I can feel her happiness.
She’s totally there in that moment on the beach–
Rilke said animals are the only ones
who are in the present, who don’t think about time:
They are simply there where they are.
He said it’s because they don’t think about death.
Is that what Rilke said?
It doesn’t sound right.

What I’m trying to say is the dog is looking at me
with such contentment–
in this photograph, where she’s lying on the beach,
head raised, in canine bliss, long front legs out,
basking in the moment:
in the intoxicating spell of the sea
and honeysuckle-sparked salt air, and vast
empty open space–
that I can feel what she is feeling.

The photo that I just brought up from an old file
while sitting here at my desk writing–
I’m not sure why,
except I guess because I still think about her–
often enough.
She looks so happy on that beach,
in the pale pink-gold summer dusk in Amagansett,
where we were with her back then,
when you and I were still more or less young–
not so long ago.

I keep looking at the photo on my computer screen:
her refined head, regal pose, beautiful coat.
This is wonderful here, she is telling me,
as she looks at me,
as I photograph her–
on the perfect, almost deserted beach
with its miles of flawless sand, at low tide,

some gulls in flight, glistening along,
a swirl of colors of a kite streaking by–
and the surf, with its glittering sounds,
its steady repetitive rush, breaking over and over
again, in an eternal present.
How that moment pulls back in.

Now with its wake of words–
where there is no end
to where we are not–