Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Poem to a Black Dog


by Alex Gallo-Brown


Pink tongue,
black bearded body,
how you‘ve kept me sane these months
with your unerring smile,
even as your hips sag 

beneath my touch,
wilt like sun-baked flowers.
Poor creature, blessed
with short memory and superior smell,
your days must be only negligibly distinct,
a sputtering fountain of unorganized time.

Or perhaps this is what we believe
in order to make sense 
of your seemingly eventless existence.
Perhaps you are actually more attuned to each day,
their unpredictable waves, their subtle surprises--
a food critic endowed with a nuanced tongue
or a jeweler examining thousands of diamonds,
not one of them the same.

So that you might taste that closely,
see that clear.
               

               RIP Chinook
                 

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