If I were a sunlit dog,
I’d bask in the road,
eat from your can,
shit on your porch.
If I were a sunlit dog,
I’d be feral as cats,
wily as ‘coons –
the mouse that chews your cables.
I’d be the aphids killing your roses,
and the black ants herding them there.
I’d be the deer, the pheasant,
the skunk, and all that never roadkill
breeding unhindered
and nibbling your corn.
I’d be the goose grease in an empty park,
the squirrel in your feeder,
the crowd you never noticed,
all the things that fled into ditches
to avoid your passing, and watched
you from the foxgrass –
and all the starving carrion birds.
But I am not a sunlit dog,
and neither is my dog, lying there,
shut in, asleep,
below the living room window.
Image: MusicFox Fx on Unsplash
Sweet and Bitter Greens 