Alison Hicks
Dog Nose Solstice
Velvet dipped in milk.
Young dog, like the year, wants nothing
but to play.
All weather is of interest.
He snuffles flakes fragrant as fur.
Legs and body lift straight up, come down.
Paws stretch chestward, cantilevering.
Almond eyes ringed with black.
My son pulling me outside, begging
me to throw a ball.
Little boy, I cannot run and hope to keep up
I so don’t want to lose you in the snow.
The Gray
I was with my father when he crossed
into the gray between dying and dead.
His voice clogged and cracked
until it disappeared. I took an hour
to walk the beach, waded through pools
low tide had left. It won’t be long now,
the hospice nurse said.
I’d read the booklet, tried to fix the signs.
Recognized nothing.
Sun through skylights. How long
did we stand there? Sit?
I must have sat, held his hand
blue seeping under the nails.
With the dog of my childhood
I felt something pass out of the body in my lap.
What a beautiful death, the nurse said.
I held his hand, but I can’t remember.
Barbara and I on the couch drinking scotch.
That was after. I must have called her.
I was with him when. Memory skips,
running ahead to catch up.
Afterlife
Follow no body
sustain no need
eat same daylight
night planets & stars
same northern lights sleep
curled up in grasses like a dog.
The unknowing
bends & oxbows
depths shallows
marshes & fens.
It will widen
& empty salts
dissolving float inland
breathed into bodies
living out on earth before
the following.
Alison Hicks’ fourth collection of poems is Homing (Sheila-Na-Gig Editions, 2024). She was awarded the 2021 Birdy Prize from Meadowlark Press for Knowing Is a Branching Trail. Previous collections are You Who Took the Boat Out and Kiss, a chapbook Falling Dreams, and a novella Love: A Story of Images. Her work has appeared in Eclipse, Gargoyle, Permafrost, and Poet Lore, among other literary magazines. She was named a finalist for the 2021 Beullah Rose prize from Smartish Pace, an Editor’s Choice selection for the 2024 Philadelphia Stories National Poetry Prize, and nominated for a Pushcart Prize by Green Hills Literary Lantern, Quartet Journal, and Nude Bruce Review. She is founder of Greater Philadelphia Wordshop Studio, which offers community-based writing workshops.
