Sarah Carey

A Duplex for Nerve Root Signature

My old dog signs pain with his lifted paw.
The vet says lameness is a classic sign.

Sign language lifts the voice of the beast.
Dying, Keats held out his living hand.

Warm scribe, you grasp what I cannot, not yet.
Hold me. Write: the law of loving is losing.   

Write: referred pain is a body betrayed.
The life of a dog is like a nerve, compressed.

MRI showed a nerve in the neck, inflamed.
The vets say, this-not-this and we-don’t-know.

We act as if the burning can be controlled.
Write: better a week early than a day late.

We’re only sensate when we’re alive.    
My old dog signs pain with his lifted paw.

Sarah Carey (Facebook @SarahKCarey, Instagram @skcarey1, Bluesky @saycarey1 or Twitter/X @SayCarey1) is a retired director of communications for the University of Florida College of Veterinary Medicine, where she worked for 35 years. Her poetry often explores place, familial and environmental loss, human and animal relationships, and ancestral inheritance, often through the lens of Southern landscapes and scientific observation. Her poems have appeared in Gulf Coast, Five Points, Sugar House Review, Atlanta Review, Florida Review, and elsewhere.

Sarah’s poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Orison Anthology and Best of the Net. Her debut full-length collection, The Grief Committee Minutes, (Saint Julian Press, 2024) was an Eric Hoffer Award finalist. Her second book, Bloodstream, was released in February 2026 from Mercer University Press. Sarah also is the author of two poetry chapbooks, including *Accommodations *(2019), winner of the Concrete Wolf Chapbook Award.