Sharing Poems

So I have the luxury of having a guy friend who actually seems to enjoy discussing my poetry with me and well, poetry in general too, anyone's. So that's nice. So I figured I could be a poetry nerd with him and I sent him a poem from Claudia Emerson's Late Wife that I liked and I asked him this question along with it:

What would you do if you met me after my husband passed away and the dog that I'd shared with him died?

Here's the poem and then his response:

Old English

I buried the sheepdog for you, trying
to save you from that grief, dug through muscled
roots, past rain-wet earth to harder, drier
soil that did not cling, but scoured the shovel.

Even the expected, smaller death recalled
the other. I transplanted sedum from the garden
to mark the place and obscure it.

--Claudia Emerson

Oh...it seems like she started this poem off like a sonnet. There's a abab rhyme scheme and 10 syllable lines in the first stanza. Many of the other poems in that section of the book are sonnets. I'm guessing this was a complete sonnet that she revised down to this. I kinda wanna email her and ask her or something. Hmmm...maybe I'll wait and see if I can come up with more questions. That would be fun.

Okay so his response:

I would help you bury the dog before I brought a new puppy home. Anyone have a shovel? Time for new memories with the new man in your life.