My Good Fortune

-- (for Joy)

byDenise Sweet
One day my son declares:
There are dogs in your future--
mixed bloods with no collars
decent, loyal, dogs of ambition
dogs with masters and dogs whose
masters are lost without them;

There will be dogs, apocalyptic and haunting
great loping animals, ablaze with fury, their eyes
pin-thin lazers in the mist, dogs
afraid of nothing.

Dogs who'll fetch bodies of water for you.
dogs who know their way in the rain
they'll wander through your past, come
when they're called

There will be dogs with thick claws
paws that dig and do so with grand ceremony,
dogs with great strands of drool
dogs who smell and whose only
desire is to smell polite company

Dogs, at the dimmest olfactory hint,
will topple small buildings
to haul ass in your direction
sidewinding and buttramming
their way towards you,

dogs who will gather at the dish
to sniff the quorum and chew the chow
lick themselves and remember fondly
of chasing deer and marking buicks
and then in, Dog Council, howl in
your honor, a '49 in dog-years
"she was that shinnobe poem maker,
and she had some dogs, way aa hey hey hey".


© 1997 Denise Sweet
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