DOG AND HAND Poem by Rutger Kopland

Dog, it comes and it comes so terribly
close, your face, my hand

while the space grows and grows around us
to lose each other in, lose

do not look at me with a glance
do not look at me with a question like
leave me, stay with me even if you let me go

I don't want to see it, but I must,
this painting says

I see the creases in your dirty coat
your clouded eye, the caves in your snout
your night-black muzzle
from far too close now

and my old hand, my own
still vulnerable living hand, its fingers,
the veins across the back of it,
from far too close now

I don't want to see it, but I must,
how that dog and that hand
alter into hundreds of others,
how we are them
no longer