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Chasing Sticks and Running Down the Wind
On the good days Patches thinks
she is a lamb
kicking up her heels,
propeller tail round and round
for balance as she runs.
On other days she clicks
the night time hardwood of the house
searching for her home,
lost and gulping for some air.
Her time has come; like all of us,
we have a time, a time
to return the elements that we are
back to the fertile places we were born.
Many fear this moment,
speculate on conjured images
of light and dark,
forever peace or fire and pain,
but Patches now led
quietly by the leash
knows only journey,
like her life,
knows only dreams of chasing sticks,
running down four foot waves,
digging holes in cool sand to lie
in the shade of summer’s heat, or
chasing down the autumn wind
along the beach, fur out flat,
a rippling blur.
I sometimes wonder why we
torture ourselves with pets,
knowing we are doomed to grieve for them?
Perhaps they teach us how to love,
to see each day as new,
full of dreams. Maybe in
their final days they show us
how to die, how to take
that moment as it arrives
still chasing sticks,
running down the wind.
David Fraser 2005
published in A Little Poetry Dec. 2005
Reading in the Round
Blackbirds, reading in the round
waiting turns, me
tense in the predicting of the spot
to start to call out
dancing letters in the words
syllables misarranged
sly substitutions lurking
poised to leap into the
swimming flow of text;
all mere performance for
some stupid clownsandcircus
story as its show time comes,
dry mouth, thick swollen tongue,
a stream of garbled sounds
lurching across the page,
line skipping, eye wandering,
blurring, hopping inky letters
on and on, until it is enough,
too much;
the drained silence,
an exhausted lowered head;
the words moving on,
now dancing in another’s mouth.
David Fraser 2005
published in Palabras Press Nov. 2005
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