Dog

Often I am staggered when I contemplate
The mayhem wrought by

One large and wily dog;
His wiring at the hands of Dog Creator
An awful joke upon the several owners
Previous to me;
But I am the one who wears the sucker sign
On a chain around my neck:

Sure, big fella, come along,
You’ll be fine and cared-for here.

What folly I repeat and then repeat
In my conviction that no dog is bad,
That I am friend to each transgressing smelly

Canine; I guess my father’s love of dogs

Survives in me, so I stubbornly persist

With the wrecks that come my way.

This one, luckily, has lived to bark his tale,
His damages an embarrassment I relive often
After calling my insurance:

“A wild animal has attacked the house;
The barns!
The siding’s gone! Oh God!”

Dead creatures rarely catch
My attention in the country,

They are all about, and I am hardened to their fates,

And so did not see the piles of fur and wing
That accumulated on my

Porch, only to generate more embarrassment
When the neighbor said:

“Well shit, it’s your damned dog that’s killin’ them,”

And about this time, I decided that
Such antics aren’t acceptable

Behavior in my realm,
And as the Sovereign, thought my

Wishes would suffice.

But heaps of carcass, shredded boards and

Holes big enough to bury hedgehogs gave

Way to a fine chaos my decades had not endured.

How can one dog eat a privy?

The destruction of the garden around
The defunct structure

Collateral damage simply taking breath away;
And what massive jaw,
Paws the size of paddles dug up standpipes,
Old metal tools used by farmers dead and gone?

What mindless springtime joy dismantled garden

Walls and redistributed boulders
Near-big as dog himself?

What frenzy smeared tall back with grease
As my vehicle's undercarriage

Was liberated of its hoses and gas lines?

Tell me, dog, are you tired of living?

Is this how

You thank me for your life?

Some thanks, I say, some thanks.

“Put that one down,” the neighbor says,
“He’s sure as hell no good.”

It all came down the night dog ate
The propane line
And caused a spill, the husband stuffing thumb
Into the spewing break

And shrieking loud for all to hear:

“Call for help, damnit, call the fire department,
Help me out here, help me out,

“The house is gonna blow,
Get out, get out, get out!”

“Go get the bird, and run away!
Jesus, do something

“Quick, right now!”

No one believes.

And yet I do not lie.
This graceful, buoyant, joyful, loving dog

Defies all I ever knew about man’s best friend,
Except he is, best friend or wants to be, that is.

And never would I give up on him,
Though I may go gray and lose my

Mind before we’re done, and
He is too old to rampage anymore.

It does not matter how I’ve coped,
Nor what I’ve done to stem

His mirthful havoc;
I’ve found some feeble measures and

I drink a lot these days.

Dying in Water

Flat, the August lake rests placid in mid-day,

And clover blooms above the shallow, pebbled shores,

Slow summer heat bursts scent from purple orbs

Nodding in the season’s long and waning close.

Boys swim and toss their words in splashing play,

Daring one another to swim the gentle waters,

They know the cool that rushes from the sandy bottom,

They’ve come here all their lives,

They know the contours of the shore,

They are seventeen and just begun,

They have no fears, no thoughts of mortal

Being, no worries in the languid sunny moments.

And so they swim, lean arms curving through silver droplets

As each turns his head in rhythmic breathing, legs pushing

Through the water, each thoughtless as their bodies

Slide silken through the center's depth.

One tires in the middle, and turning back to green pines

Above the clover, somehow his effort falters, some

How his effort falters, the boy slips once and

Slips again as friends grow small in steady reaching of

The other waiting side, the far shore he too sought.

He drowned in the summer of his only just beginning,

Just seventeen, just swimming in the lake.

Taos 2004: Adobe and Magpies

I go down 25, from Pueblo, and get off at Walsenburg,

Heading south, still, but west,

Into New Mexico.

Early afternoon and the light is harsh,

Flattening the changing winter landscape,

And the colors of the desert as it deepens

Are like no winter colors I’ve ever seen, but here,

In New Mexico.

Back roads twist, steep and narrow,

Past remote adobe churches perched on rocks,

The Madonna in repose in the nave; I don’t have to go in

To know where she is.

I start to come down out of the hills and see, below,

Smoke lifting from low adobe outposts

Hugging the floor of the desert.

I pass rusted pick-up trucks and falling-down corrals.

The earth is pink and the entire sky begins to turn purple—

There is no west at sunset

In New Mexico.

Low green sage bushes clump with snow and

In the pass before Taos, a squall whips around the car;

I slow to a crawl, seeing just the cloak of white.

Coming round the bend, snow stops,

Late afternoon light blooms over the mountains, and

There is Taos.

Next morning, I sit with coffee, wrapped in blankets.

From the balcony of the old adobe inn,

Again I watch smoke rising from adobe houses

Scattered in the distance behind me;

Rising from the Pueblo on the outskirts of Taos.

The valley smells of fire—mesquite and pinon—

Burning in the kivas and the kitchen hearths,

And it is the deepest imaginable quiet,

A hundred miles of quiet in the frigid early morning.

Magpies interrupt my repose; scolding, quarreling,

Calling; flitting from fence to fence,

Tree to tree, a racket I don’t mind.

Far from the chaos of home, a backdrop for the

Slow settling of my bones and breath,

High desert consolation, black and white,

Magpies startle against the blinding of blue New Mexico sky.