A Dog Eating Grass Brings Rain

I have no anecdote to relate—as usual, the story tight
as a tourniquet, throttling back any river of recall.
Which you would call a sin—without detail, the dog
is nothing at all, without saying you, too, slobbered
like this dog, you ate dead birds and scratched
a hole in your neck like this dog. Without saying
that you saw the horses standing with their backs
to the hedge and wished them into a full gallop,
silver goads flung from the narrow pinning
of your eye. Well, the dog is made of winter;
his feed largely symbolic. And you can achieve
the same effect by tossing beetles into a lake—
all day the rooms of rain frequented, filled.
All day the dogs with crosses of mist upon
their foreheads, chewing dumbly at the dawn.
A mosquito flying close to the ground, clouds pursed
and gathered around the umbrella's dark knees.
Murder of a toad. All these things just to say
some days the sky will open and some days
it will not. Not how it does, not how fast,
the speed with which one might spin
gold from dross, noon from midnight.
It's a cheap sort of provocation—
building futures out of these symbols and signs,
but to what other meaning should we cleave?

Copyright © 2007 Hannah Craig All rights reserved
from Cranky
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission