That Part in the Music

Once loyal to a cruel master,
the dog moves like a man who
not so long ago weighed a lot less
and is still figuring the difference,
what if anything to make of it.
It doesn’t matter, whatever
tenderness she’s known since;
the dog, I mean. They’re called
hesitation wounds, the marks
left where the hand, having meant 
to do harm, started to, then 
reconsidered. As if a hand
could reconsider. The dog 
wants to trust, you can see it 
in her eyes, like that part in the music 
where it still sounds like snow 
used to. There were orchards, still;
meadows. She’ll never be free.