DOG DAYS

From the window
I watch the blue containment of noon,

and every day the dog trots into it,
pees sprightly on the clover,

then makes headway through the timothy grass,
his coat full of seed. Perhaps

he has some idea of what wants him
and where to go, and since he's no skeptic,

he goes—rye, corn, the whole fermenting
season ablaze, the dog running off

as if to make August history.
Who's to say

his is not the same lithe world
that swayed before pharaoh's daughter

and the baby in the bulrushes.
And this sun overhead

heated the earth when voices flared
a final, frantic time

for Joan on her pyre of wood.
Precise, these moments

of lives waiting in reeds
or balancing atop the sticks,

while the dog flops down
after a day of futile adventure,

the ravine glistening with wings
and an undergrowth of eyes.

First published in Amicus and Poetry Daily