Lynn Strongin

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Your Marl Dog, Kietha Tenant

At the supper-table
do not think about money,
do not think about your broken heart:

Think about the food.
You've moved out of the darkness overlapping the city;
Ninth Street, with its low taxes & churchyard, stands
abandoned.

Everything,
down to donations bequeathed animal shelters
the small dog you found at a shelter polished over
Chaos
sinks back to where it came from.

Chaos
sinks back to where it came from:
Autumn striates winter marbles earth:

October, your birth
leaves:    No more wood scaffold, no more steep rent.
You are no longer a tenant.

Your old dog, Keitha, a shelty,
the marl one,
is folding and unfolding her grief across miles of winter air
as though she could get there to where you are.

Copyright (C) Lynn Strongin, 2006. All rights reserved.