CarrollBlog 3.12

Retriever

by Faith Shearin

My father, in middle age, falls in love with a dog.

He who kicked dogs in anger when I was a child,

who liked his comb always on the same shelf,

who drank martinis to make his mind quiet.

He who worked and worked—his shirts

wrapped in plastic, his heart ironed

like a collar. He who—like so many men—

loved his children but thought the money

he made for them was more important

than the rough tweed of his presence.

The love of my father's later years is

...