I’m writing this down.
My dog curls, ampersand, into sleep
beneath the open window.
She inhales its highway surf.
Her paws swim in air, she dreams of flight,
or launches into deep, warm tides.
She chases dreams; gulls, fish and other dogs
who have come to the beach, and, love,
I’ll say this: everything you’ve informed me
about my life is correct: an
insubstantial current
that reaches only
the knees.
Is this why her nose picks at the empty air,
sniffs out the invisible things
who just, for now, breathe here?
Still, she’s happy to play
with all beasts in the feral tides.
They seem to have learned
how to go on this way,
the chase of thrown-away things,
sticks and leaves, birds and stars,
or laughter, which also flies,
so that sometimes we may,
and the hands
that, in the beginning,
gave themselves away
and whose travel is far
from their watery punctuations,
and for these things
I write
everything down
to drown them into nothing.

ph, Hamilton ON, 28/916