I am not sure if it is an affect of age, but I find myself thinking of what I cannot know of what I have experienced.  Those everyday realities that passed you by because you never realised that you ought to have considered them.  So many things about the people you care about are just like the oxygen you breathe, it is so ordinary you take it for granted.  Right up until it is taken away.
     When John Donne said, in one of his sermons, that he was diminished by each Man's death, he was absolutely right.  I am now at an age where my parents' generation is largely gone.  Not only their memories and the details of those memories are gone, but their memories about me too are gone with them.  I have written about this before in the poem, 'What dog was Rodney?' and it continues to fascinate me - and disturb me, because what is gone is gone.
     It was while I was thinking about the opening question in this poem that the form and the subject matter began to form itself.  The central incident was one where I was actually more concerned about the reaction of my mother to my dog Penny's injury than the reaction of the dog.  Who I have to admit, made the most of her 'baddy' with the sort of resigned fortitude that only yellow Labrador bitches can pull off with real style.  Penny also complicated the whole concept of memory by herself being fairly indiscriminate in which paw she offered for sympathy at a later date!
     The last stanza expresses something I do believe, or at least something which needs consideration.  I seem to make a distinction between 'maker' and 'scribe' and I write of 'just a narrative' which suggests a whole area of debate about 'writing' and some sort of truth which I rather pointedly do not develop.
     I really like the ending!

Lost

What is the nearest thing in your

Life Time that you can never know?

Those unrecorded facts for which

there is no witness left alive to testify?

Did grandfather Powell ever wear cologne?

What was grandmother Rees’s favourite book?

The metal post was on the right

of that long path that led up to the field.

No more than a few inches high.  I think

that it was used by Gramp to mark out space with

rough green twine for flowers or for veg and,

hardy perennial, was left from year to year

to help re-draw the ordered battle lines

between the cultivated and the weeds

that filled my grandfather’s non-working years.

Released from city life,

the dog bounded to unaccustomed green,

and in her flight, an edge of that small post

swept through her foot.

Her bundled, limping run back to us all,

within the echo of her almost human scream,

punched pain to nausea.

The garish red along the yellow of her fur

from flesh gash-gape drenching a paw so delicate

it could have been a charm; and so much blood

from what turned out to be a cut so small;

but deep enough, that when the fur grew back,

it didn’t coat the gristle that was left.

And then for all her life,

enquiries for her ‘baddy paw’

would cause a lean (to left or right?)

and she would proffer (left or right?)

and flinch it back from soft

attempted human touch

to play the game

of her remembered pain.

Now she’s contained within a history

that I re-write as maker and as scribe.

But in the interest of truth

I cannot bring myself to plump

for ‘right’ or ‘left’ – because my choice

would make her just a narrative,

and not my dog.

I must admit that I am surprised at how long this poem turned out to be.  I thought, when I started that this was going to be another of my sonnet-like efforts but, as you can see, it turned into something longer.  Whether it is more substantial I leave for the consideration of the reader.