Instead
       

We taught our horses to be wild, our dogs to shoot guns.
A sense of wonder marked our cowards;
a sense of resignation, everyone else.
Whoever pulled their own fingernails out ruled
with bloody pliers. The world was safer
once we understood it was against us.
There was talk of changing things,
but instead we put the faces of famous men on gargoyles.
There was talk of changing things,
but instead we repaired streetlights so they glowed
in the night fog like the eyes of wolves
who sat panting beyond the fences.

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Copyright © 2015 Rick Bursky All rights reserved
from I'm No Longer Troubled by the Extravagance
BOA Editions
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission