I Can't Stop Thinking About the Dog
Tied up and beaten as a puppy –
finally rescued,
he’d lay his large head
in his owner’s lap
and lick the children’s faces.
Only to be stolen,
tied to a speeding truck and
hauled up a hill, running until
his long legs at last gave out
– dragged to death.
I rage, imagining the awful ways
I would punish this man.
There it is –
the very same capacity for cruelty
within me.
And so I remember Gary
on death row, and know
this man too must have his story,
and how nothing rescued him
from this repeating –
no inborn trait of alchemy
that turns cruelty into kindness,
no concerned look of a stranger,
no glimpse of another way
to be in the world.
(Plainsongs)
