Saturday, October 10, 2015

LIFE AND DEATH

Dearest my little 
tough ruddy beagle—struggling, as you lie
sleeping, to scamper unprotected

through whichever autumn bright blazes 
of tangled trails, so tight on both sides 
with rectangles of huge alien architecture—

and snarling, unquenchable, 
and fang-foaming, 
and all red-eyed

after whatever manner of indiscernible 
and patently uncatchable prey 
which must lay before you; 

difficult!—as it seems
to dream 
as you're doing,

of such urgent 
and such blood-colored things
without the use of a language;

it is precisely
because of this
that I desperately wish! 

I could tell you:
how it's
unarguably—tougher!

to be your ragged old father—
having just returned home 
after spending the better part of an hour talking—so hard

and at cross-purposes
to the saturnine and half-asleep face—of his 
petite blonde barber.