man's best friend

Dog Day Afternoon

My dog you lie sleeping,
more content than I will ever be.
My god, you know nothing of
days, weeks, birthdays, weddings, death, divorce.

Your disappointment lasts just a moment.
Forgetting you didn't get to ride in the car,
not even wondering where I went, greeting me
with the same electric enthusiasm whether I am
arriving home from a clock's slow crawl across eight hours work
or from the minutes it ticks while taking out the trash,
all the same to you it seems to me in a dog day afternoon.

If only I could forget so easily,
the slights, the slanders, the longing left waiting
in a memory eager to retrieve,
no matter how far I have flung
the sticks and stones that broke my bones,
their names and faces fetched,
etched in a brain forever reacting to a bell
sounding, ringing with the sting of resentment.

My god, to be you my dog,
knowing tomorrow is not even a conception you conceive of,
that yesterday leaves no mark and today happiness is assured
in a walk through fallow fields where yesterday, today, tomorrow's
memories are carried away by a wind and your fleeting sense
of their scent soon forgotten, sparing you again and again
the collective scar-tissue that marks your master's skin.