My Dalmation yearns to speak to me this morning.
She is more-than-elegant in her sleek musculature—
demure, nubile, oddly cat-like before breakfast.
Once in the fields she crouches, her face to my face,
her eyes bulging with conviction, venerable
as the pocked statue of a griffin seated
two thousand years on the desert floor,
virgin throat pulsating with grisly secrets;
the beasts know how to live, I’m thinking,
blindly improvising beyond time—oh to be
drawn through life by such a nose!
The grasses dry to a sticky pertness
cantilevered toward the sun like radar dishes.
Man and dog, we curl up in this crisp orange light
my ear pressed desperately to her underbelly.
After hours of thundering, I hear:
Always pee on bushes at the corners of your yard
It’s a dog-eat-dog world; only vomit on cloudy days
Avoid cats and porcupines; eat bloodroot for heartburn.