Those stairs.
Those stairs were a particular vexation
to Ned, my golden retriever.
This is from late in Ned's life.
It's called "Stairs and Days."
"Ned lifts one broad, blond paw onto the next step up.
And when it slides to the right, pulls it back
in toward his body and pushes from below.
Then the left one follows.
He pushes again, and now he's hauled his bulk up one step.
Three flights.
He's nearly 12 and huffs and focuses and steams his way
up the first, negotiates the shorter second set,
but then confronts the longest, a curving stair
that spills him out into the hall before our apartment door.
I praise his stamina, his determination, his fine,
dangling tongue.
He makes just one demand, these mornings' and evenings' salvos
up the stairs.
If I walk too quickly and pause a few risers above him,
he goes no further.
He waits till I climb back down to him.
He's made it clear.
We go side by side, or he will not go at all.
In this way, he proposes we will enter into the future.
Sometimes I stall as if a cold plunge opened before us,
and the next step gave way to a wrong-end-of-the-telescope view
of a vertical stack of days to come in this crooked old
building, its crooked hallway empty to the presence,
who would continue on these stairs with me if he could.
Though I know how gladly he will be rid of them.
Then he puts one thick, blond paw on the tread
immediately above us and waits for me to do the same."