This week’s poem, by Edward J. Rielly, offers a brief and intimate glimpse into the passing of a beloved being. I love this poem’s close attention the details of such a quiet, internal process, and I love the gentleness with which it depicts the final breath. 

Rielly is a professor emeritus at Saint Joseph’s College of Maine, where he taught for 40 years in the English Department and created and directed the Writing and Publishing program. He has written or edited about 35 books, including “Native American Women Leaders: Fourteen Profiles” (McFarland & Company), “Playing Solitaire: Poems” (Moon Pie Press), and “Learning to See,” a collection of haiku published by Brooks Books as the winner of its annual haiku chapbook contest. He lives in Westbrook with his wife, Jeanne.
 

A Way of Ending

The dog died quietly, sensing perhaps
that the pain would pass like a dewclaw
cut too close, or a splinter slowly
working its way out—how before he
had slept pain away, his body drawn
into a circle in a corner of our kitchen.

He couldn’t grasp the distinction, not even
when the light went out in midday
and the rumble in his throat gradually
receded like an echo in a long, dark cave.
He just lay his golden head down as if
for sleep, breathed slowly, and then breathed
not at all.

— Edward J. Rielly

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “A Way of Ending,” ©1988 by Edward J. Rielly, was originally published in “The Breaking of Glass Horses and Other Poems” (Elm Press). It appears by permission of the author.