This isn't about me
(and they're not my dogs)

"Surrender is so hard
and summer ends in two hours"

When Lucky met chase
they rolled in the hay.
It was one of those
"Where you been? There you are," days.
Born in the same barn, Babe.

She welcomed him
with the intimacy of cats and babies,
then tumbled him back into the jumble
of "another" who still ruled her.

Of course they could be just friends.

On their second "date" she asked him
if he could mend a broken heart.
She told him that
she was still romantically entangled, ensnared.
She called her lover names (Stalin),
and cried.
She said she would be free.

He fought the impulse
to put pickets round his heart
and left it open.

Wounds and pickets: pickets and wounds.
Oh, tender surface.
Better to hide deep.

Walking the dogs through the quarry,
the meadow space,
they hunt mice.
Mice sometimes make their nests near the surface.
The dogs wag their tails enthusiastically
as they pull the nests apart,
and sometimes snack on babies.
Then he'll avoid the quarry for a week or two.
He's not heartless.

If he were a macho man
he'd hold back the tender flesh of his time
until she made a choice.
He'd leave her with
his love, his flowers, and his CDs.

But what was there to do
for her, for them,
except to be her fool?

Arriving at her door
he'd wonder what reality would greet him.
Was she that good friend of his?
Oh butterfly heart,
Oh webbing between cat's toes.

Was it all a masque
to lead him to her metaphysics?
to some deep mystery?
He waited at the gate.
He loved the gate.

Ah, now he saw it.
She wanted to be as close as could be.
She shed her wound ont' him.

It's a little difficult to breathe today.
He kept catching on a sigh.
He'd thought she'd be his Chase.

When Lucky met Chase,
they nuzzled, they rolled, they wrestled.
They "There you are, Corazon,
after all these years."
They've met again twice, since,
Lucky and Chase.
They sniffed, and wagged, and walked.

Back in the quarry,
arguing with fate:
his life was little things
and he wasn't enjoying the little things right.
Rita beagle's cuteness,
Lucky, his blue healer's smile,
these things must suffice.

His heart had hardened in the night.
They'd come to hunt the little mice.