Poetry by Louisa Campbell

                               Jaroslav A. Polák CC



My Dog


I know it’s ridiculous
to think my dead husband is living inside my dog,
but he is.
I glimpse him when he glances at me from the side
with familiar, glinting eyes,
from within his velvet-ears-and-shaggy-ruff disguise.

(Shush now, good dog, settle down.)

I knew before they turned the machines
off,
that you had left that bled-out body and were
hovering,
just beneath the strip light.

I cried when the wise woman said, He’s here,
he’s saying, ‘It’s alright’.
A shock,
but why should I assume you were tucked up nicely,
silently, in front of your headstone, all tidy?
That was never your style.

We had some good times, though, didn’t we?
Didn’t we?
You were hefty and brawny
and pushing your blonde floppy fringe back
with Rizlas and Zippo in hand.
You were jeans and steel toe caps
and brown leather jacket,
stirring and simmering chillies and spices,
friends in low places
and friends in high places;
tab at the races and tab at The Crown.

You were,  Keep smiling,
punning and grinning,
rubbing your firm hands together with glee.
Not one young woman in tears, in black
at your freshly-dug grave,
but three.

Sometimes you staggered,
Tripped over a daisy, you sniggered.
A fool buying two half bottles of Bells.
I’ll be dead before I’m thirty, you wagered:
were you a prophet, or were you a clown?
(Shush now, good dog, settle down.)

I know it’s ridiculous,
but I never knew whether you loved me.
Here boy,
sit next to me quietly,
shush now, good dog, settle down.
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My Dog first appeared in Acumen

Louisa Campbell's mental health-related poetry pamphlets are The Happy Bus (Picaroon Poetry, 2017), and The Ward (Paper Swans Press, 2018). Her first full collection will be out with Boatwhistle Books in the Spring of 2021. She lives in Kent, England.

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