Vanishing Point

If I go back to the place it begins: a black-and-white
tom, trains rattling my crib. When I stand,
I can see to where the tracks disappear. One day
the cat is gone; gone, they say, but somehow I know
the sad bundle I see between the rails
is what I have lost. And I bury
the memory for fifty years until my own dog
goes missing. She is the last thing
among last things, and I know she has been taken
by the trains. For seven miles I walk the tracks, fingering
the leather leash in my bag. The rails are higher
than I imagined, the ties spaced wrong. I expected grass
through flat fields, not these sharp stones,
not steep embankments; not trains bearing down:
hot metal, the ground shuddering, the whistle’s
weight. Pain is a bargain with the gods—as if I can resurrect;
as if that old dog could run the twenty miles, thirty, forty,
ninety miles to home, could follow the tracks, the smell
of the trains, a whistle echoing what she heard in her sleep
for so many years. As if that old dog
could follow her love to me. I call her name
across pastures and woods, back yards and empty lots,
picture her running to my voice,
running toward me down the tracks. I can see
to the horizon, to the place where the rails come together,
almost out of sight.