There she is at the window!
So I signal with my hand,
Come, meet me at the door, here.
She runs, her legs a tangle,
her muzzle dark from mouthing
where ever she dug in the ground.
Then up she lifts from the ground,
four legs and I am a window.
She leaps and is mouthing
my neck, belt buckle, my hand.
Burs have her fur in a tangle.
She sniffs my socks and sits here.
Well, what have we here?
Her paws have left mud ground
in my shirt and my hair a wet tangle
as if during a storm, a window
burst open, I rub at the stains with my hand.
Stay! but she hears other words I'm mouthing.
Older, she is no longer teething, mouthing
leather shoes, sanding the baseboards here,
and her growth has my hand
reaching higher off the ground.
Her dog life a narrow window,
seasons tapping death's tangle.
She grumbles and slumps under the curtains, that tangle
like the hems of dresses, the wind has been mouthing.
She's unaware of the squirrel at the window
eating an acorn on the sill here,
slowly dropping pieces to the ground,
circling the nut from mouth to hand.
I ruffle her head with my hand;
dog dreams a rough tangle
of catching balls mid-air, ground-
sniffing and finger- mouthing.
Now it is so quiet here,
gone is the squirrel from the window.
My head on my hand, I'm mouthing
the tangle of dog names to insert here:
some buried in the ground, others barking at my childhood window.
YOU ARE READING
Running with the Dog (Atty)
PoetryPerhaps it should read "walking" but that seldom happens. A series of dog poems in many forms: haiku, tanka, cinquain, haibun, pantoum, modern sonnet, sestina, free verse, glosa, and a rhyming poem.
