Today's poem is by Matt Hart
Matt Hart Running With Daisy, His Dog
for Nate Pritts
Running with his dog, Matt Hart sucks in
like apple blossoms twisting in the wind, like
He runs as fast as he can (mainly because
gone, until jerking at the end of her adjustable lead,
again, grrr! look at that sparrow, that mailbox,
roll over run off with this stick . . . And so it goes.
and starts running again taking a deep breath;
the one he's seen in his mind, never for long and never
Unlike him though, she runs for it as hard as she can,
the things he doesn't know: How will it feel
big hunks of frosted air and then forces them back out
like barely visible tufts of pink cotton candy,
shadowy clouds of flying red ants and
a million or so unfinished projects.
he hates to run), then stops to walk and catch,
again, his breath. But Daisy keeps going, going,
she turns with a look of sympathetic exasperation saying,
C'mon c 'mon c 'mon, let's run fast
that squirrel, let's stick our head in this pile of leaves,
this one right here, then fling 'em around, fall down
It's December and Matt Hart just had another birthday.
36, he thinks, and divides it by three, and doubles it,
he wonders, as he often does, about the finish line,
the one which is his own yard, his front door, but also
for real, but that one, which, when it occurs to him, stops him
in his tracksuit. Sometimes, he thinks Daisy sees it too.
There it is there it is there it is, let's go!
But he can't "let's go," can't get over all
to vanish? Will Daisy get a bone?
Will anybody be waiting there to greet them?
Copyright © 2006 Matt Hart All rights reserved
from The Greensboro Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission
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