28 December 2005 | Vol. 5, No. 4
Moment
There's a moment in every dog's life
when it surrenders its dogginess
to a greater good, maybe to you
if you're lucky and lacking the love
of a good dog, and that becomes
the firmament in the earthquake
your life is. Loneliness can't enter
through that door—make your body
a door: what is overhead bears down
and the shape of nothing becomes
visible like your dog in the corner
who dreams silently, his legs pumping.
This is what you recall when his brave,
blue-black tongue lolls from his mouth,
so long, so thick you are shocked,
and you cradle it in your inadequate
hands to keep it off the cold, tile floor
in the last moments of his dedicated life
weeping like a child with the silly hope
you are the door he's passing through.
About the author:
Laura McCullough has published poems widely in literary magazines and journals such as Conte, Dream People, Nimrod, Potion, Hotel Amerika, Gulf Coast, Nightsun, Spoken War, Iron Horse Quarterly, Boulevard, Amarillo Bay, God Particle, Poetry East, Confluence, Exquisite Corpse, 42opus, the Potomac, Stirring, Word Riot, Tarpaulin Sky, and others. Her first collection of poems, The Dancing Bear, was published in February 2006 by Open Book Press with jacket blurbs by Stephen Dunn, Li-Young Lee, and BJ Ward.
For further reading:
See the complete list of work by Laura McCullough at 42opus. Browse the contents of 42opus Vol. 5, No. 4, where "Moment" ran on December 28, 2005. List other work with these same labels: poetry, elegy, editors' select.
