somewhere a dog barked
"When confronted with an uninspiring unseen bark, I like to pretend the dog is Lassie’s cousin, bearing a message."
—Rosecrans Baldwin
butterflies drifted, neighbors sighed,
somewhere a dog barked—
muffled, true, but a bark
not a woof, not a ruff, but a bark
somewhere, there, beyond,
on the periphery, just over
the edge of the wood or hedge:
a dog barked in the distance
in the echoes of winter silences,
spring blossoms, summer's
suffocation, autumn's inevitability
of fallen leaves & pumpkin spice,
as you walk across a near-empty
parking lot, the dog barks
out there, somewhere, where
the scent of wet flowers &
cut grass fades amongst
the petrichor of fast rains
beneath the rows of blackthorns
or rowans, not a howl, exactly,
definitely not a growl or whimper
or whine or grunt, but a good
hearty bark tapering off yet
in that bark the siren call
of yearning or searching
or something else you
feel & know exactly why
the dog barked because
you feel it, too, & you'd
bark back but what would
that prove other than maybe
that barking dogs aren't
barking dogs at all but
that's not true (you can
tell the difference, after all—
the pure animal animus
of a bark rings through) &
maybe that's all there is
to it, the dog barking
just to feel alive, to say
here I am, just like you
hearing the dog & rolling
over in your bed to reach
for the day's first cigarette
or your lover's breast &
thinking I'm alive, thank
god I'm alive & out there,
all the dogs barking in
exclamation of existence, too