The difficulty I have here, and Zinya's post makes this point, is that the direction and variety of interpretation seems endless partly because thsi piece seems both ambivalent and judgemental.

It seems to me that a sentence like this "Mother, the dutiful, is washing dishes or worshipping and beseeching protection (those being her jobs) but meanwhile not part of their lives, their real lives, their inner and emotional lives where now that prayed-for protection has crumbled like so much dead fur coming off in clumps." is creating a narrative out of some pretty thin cloth.

I guess that's the issue I have: the narrative seems only half-baked or maybe more exactly passive-aggressive. The last two lines: "You must be delegating comfort to the saints./You must be imagining we need you this way." seem harshly judgemental. The Dad and Daughter have run over a dog and the daughter is upset that the Mother's reaction does not meet her needs? Who is that all about? In the end, my reaction is: So what happened to the dog?

This is an odd poem as it seems to ask for understanding, but it's psychological drama seems poorly thought out.

Comments anyone? Am I off base? I feel like I'm falling into a trap of being judgemental about a poem that thinks it's about not being judgemental....

We brought the dog home in the trunk.

All the way from school Dad said she was
back there, feet on the same red carpet as mine.

The February sun made me feel like a thief.

You're not part of this memory. Your figure is missing
from the strange gray half-light of the closed garage
where he tried but couldn't shut her eyes, Siberian blue,
where we stood, two blunderers, not knowing what to do
with the clumps of dead fur coming off in our hands.

One week before your birthday. You must be inside
washing dishes by hand, or wringing your prayers.
You must be respecting the father's collapse, his soft
exterior caving in like cake, the daughter's undoing
in one afternoon a dozen years of ladylike calm.

You must be delegating comfort to the saints.

You must be imagining we need you this way.