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The Rust-Footed Dog

Last week the quilted cold quivering
across the pool was much too thick
for building underwater, so the children
brought the dog with rusty paws
inside the shivering garden walls, and
made themselves a house of laughing vines.

They laid the stationery out in fans
before the woodstove, assembling plans
in drafts of edgeless pencil—
children, those tireless architects!
They built the house together, daylit again.
The rusty-footed dog kept guard.

Stay by the children one more year,
though they demand eternity:
give them your youth, and do not sleep
silently on your rusted feet,
as long as they are here to build
the spectral home before it disappears.