Threesome, twosome, to one bark away
From an empty dish under a limp leash
Leaving horizontal days past
Pulling me about the riverfront;
And back to an empty house
Where warning snouts
Filtered strangers without
Walls, where four eyes bathed
Near the fireplace
While the ones closed in my lap
Beneath the tender scratch
Of a hand that led them all
By fingered command -
Sit. Stand. Heel. Crawl.
To the night memories close as lungs
Collapse and two eyes above a warmed whimper and mine
Gather the dull gaze of a door whose pending chime
Startles one last weak, troubled, muffled, bubbled Bark.
Augustus / Folsom / October 2016