Body my house
my horse my hound
what will I do
when you are fallen
Where will I sleep
How will I ride
What will I hunt
Where can I go
without my mount
all eager and quick
How will I know
in thicket ahead
is danger or treasure
when Body my good
bright dog is dead
How will it be
to lie in the sky
without roof or door
In a 1998 “Poet’s Choice” newspaper column, former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Hass  shared an anecdote about this passage: 
 When Mark McGwire was taking his victory lap the other night, half dancing and half jogging around the bases after hitting his sixty-second home run home run of the season [ breaking a 36-year-old record ], my companion [poet Brenda Hillman], who is exceptionally literate and takes a philosophical interest in the bodies of baseball players, regarded his strangely bulked-up torso and murmured, musingly, “When Body my good bright dog is dead…” 
 McGwire was then widely rumored, and later found, to be using steroids, which can shorten “Body’s” lifespan considerably.
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