41. 3 dog poems

​1
don't
despair
dear wife

there is a
cow gentle
soft
tongued

dog on
our roof
snapping
at birds

about whom
the neighbor
called
my work

concerned
for our dog
but not
the birds

2
our basset isn't like
a toddler unaware
of his bad haircut.
he likes his bad haircut.
his middle name is wallow.
grace of a fish
but a catfish.
every three weeks or
so he writes a letter
to the editor.
there's rolling of the eyes.
his missives are always
the same: complaints
about the park district,
the state of the roads,
how loud kids
are nowadays, windfarms.
the usual outrage. when the
paper comes that day
he barks and barks.

3
I'm under the back steps
with my dog.

He spent the day there.
It's lonely like the

time I slept in a
field across from a

house. It
was cold and the

porch
light kept me half awake.

There are leaves and dirt
but mostly there's fur.

This is where we've gone to
dream and to twitch and

to bite one another's cheeks
and smooth one another's faces.

Oily nose to dusty nose. That's
how we were.

He's been drinking and drinking
and throwing up clear

so we keep the toilet lids down
and hope

for the best or the
worst. Not the in between.

He went under the culvert once.
There had

been a flood and he
was fetching sticks. He

went into a
drain and bobbed up on the

other
side like a cork.
He snatched frisbees

out of the
air like plates off a shelf.

Bury me
under the back porch
steps with my dog.

We can be
there together next to the

cool foundation of the house.

It's a place nobody looks. It's
a place everyone finds.

#weeklypoemandpic