Dog Poem

 

She and I look into each other. She doesn’t understand it, my sorrow, 

my “orphan”–a tyranny of school or church,

a paradox enlarging silence. After dark

we go searching the ideal life, two tramps 

in mud time and she probes among stones, 

scenting nails, buried spoons, staves and dishes,

late winter articles of shadow

for her nose is the hypnosis of the past.

Don’t you know she says, you can join our life?

To her all things are true, present, clear, so very clear.