“Another” suggests the numerous times the speaker has already made such an offering; “whatever” indicates the waning or the taxed nature of her faith in this world of aging and dying friends and family. Faith is there, though, although Lindsay is not seeking the mystic’s route; for her, faith is to be found among children and dogs, the latter figuring centrally in four of the poems from the last part of the book, Section IV:
I awaken and nothing has died
the dog is upside down beside me
on the gritty comforter...
...walk?
and he tips right-side-up
and his feet graze the floor before mine
so I follow him
down the boot-weary stairs
so he can finish a little more
of his griefless living
“Still Life with Morning and Dog” is not optimistic, but its bracing weariness enacts the speaker’s resilience, seemingly contingent upon the companionship of this old dog. The earlier “Girl and Dog Praying,” the second poem in Section II, is based on a photograph from 1902: “She and her nondescript elderly spaniel/ are kneeling together,” the poem begins, then goes on to chronicle their intimacy in minute, tactile, sensory detail that ultimately arrives at what must be Lindsay’s most convincing gesture at faith:
the timid flame on the hurricane candle quivers
in both of their breaths, the featherbed yields
beneath the weight of elbow and paw, and
it doesn't matter that there is no Crucifix
over the little headboard, no Bible
beside the lamp, for this
is the prayer that beckons God in from the cold.