Down by the Buffalo a willow bends

      in an abandoned yard

      where summers we trained hard.

Long we were buddies, never such fast friends

as we became after my spirit change,

      finally coming around

      to faith I now expound,

unlikely candidate. You found it strange

I of all people should return to God

      from Whom you never turned.

      In your Norse heart He burned.

Hunting together mainly to applaud

Lab after Lab we whelped, hunted and buried,

      So many parts in you

      I loved (and I still do),

your lealty to the lady whom you married,

your reverence every Sunday we skipped church

      to quarter far afield,

      bag what the wild would yield,

weaving through trees our perching angels search

to flush pheasants, partridge and sharptails too,

      electrify the slogs

      of two delighted dogs—

fragrances. We humans don’t have a clue.

II.

Stevie, what can we hope to do this fall

      when tree rows are ablaze

      on sunny maple days

and from the corn the hungry roosters call?

If I were you, I might just hunt alone,

      no need to carry me,

      but you’ll need poetry

to bear you forth and back. I can atone

for past excess with every stoic smile,

      extempore epigram,

      sandwich, Virginia ham

with Irish cheddar. Will I walk a mile?

That’s all I did last year, undiagnosed,

      thinking it was just old age,

      writing page after page

as cancer wormed its way into its host.

Best hope? Chucky lives out his life with me,

      his five or six more years

      in which laughter or tears

wrung from my rare readers are my fee

for a long life in which we’ve been best friends,

      in which we’ve knelt and played

      with puppies, knelt and prayed

for a good hunt, and then my story ends.