“Funeral” by Larry Eby
Funeral
My dog is digging
a hole in
the backyard
with a pigeon
dead in its mouth. Gray
feathers wedged
in the wet grass. It
must have been
injured, or maybe
the dog was lucky enough to catch
it mid-air, the bird flying low
searching for worms
or seed. The burial
is quick, without
ceremony. Some preservation
for a later meal, or possibly,
the dog knows how to
care for dead things.
Larry Eby is the author of two books of poetry, Flight of August, winner of the 2014 Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and Machinist in the Snow, ELJ Publications 2015. His work can be found in Forklift: Ohio, Passages North, Fourteen Hills, Thrush Poetry Journal, and others. When he isn’t moonlighting as a poet, he works as a Software Engineer, building video games in Southern California.
