“watching waiting”

waters encroach beneath two doors    she watches    she watches the man’s bright strings of spittle dance in the rise and fall of his snores    this old man in his wheelchair who refused to leave    he promised they could tolerate a little water    in thirty years only once the house took on water    a foot maybe two

she is curled on his lap    tail faintly wagging the times she feels him stir    she gazes about    watches him then the water    waits for him to wake    howling yowling wind imposes its fury without response from the deafened old man    cars once afloat on a newborn sea founder    cracks of shocked branches sound    from his lap she stands on her back legs to slurp from her water bowl on the counter     next to water bottles tins of tuna white bread jerky    he is prepared with a boy scout knife from another life    a battery lantern sheds miserly light

she paws him licks his face as waters rise    wakes him from his deep dream    he was in his mother’s kitchen eating biscuits and ham with his dog Mitch grinning at his side    he struggles awake    aware now    he fails in his tottery rise    this time is different    the water rises though he wills it to stop    he begins whispering now I lay me down to sleep… the only prayer he knows

at last he scratches her cheeks, boosts her with care onto the countertop    strokes her and murmurs his sorrow till he is borne away on his death chariot    clinging for moments to cabinet pulls doorjambs begging his mother to save him    in time she is carried off by insistent swells    paddles through the interior tide    finds unlikely harbor atop the silent refrigerator as the waters skim merely its surface    he floats by    ignores her barks   he wheels in a drifting soft eddy   disappears

a night a day she labors to feel safe and loved    licks moisture where she huddles till waters withdraw leaving her alone to puzzle her way forward    the old man calls no word to her    she half jumps half falls to the counter to the floor to find him    he dangles by his arm from the chair she is never permitted on    she watches him   she barks    waits for water   waits for breakfast    waits for him

sunlight beckons through a window    she watches it    finally indulges in a long agreeable stretch    waits no more    with no goodbye she pads away    steps toward life     through her dog-size door

Stephanie Madan’s fiction, essays and poems on wide-ranging subjects such as murder, good dogs and speculations regarding the afterlife have been published in anthologies, online and in the former print magazine My Table.