Undivided
       

A blur of black Lab rockets off the dock
to hit the water ten feet out and cast
a cloud of crystals skyward in a shock
of broken rainbows whirling from the blast.

The dog desires no greater good in all
the world than this: to run and leap and swim
so wholly focused on a rubber ball
that bobs away on waves ahead of him.

He closes on it with a final surge
and arcs his course to home in on a boy
who's waiting on the bank, where he'll emerge
as fifty pounds of single-minded joy.

In years of emptiness and artifice
the man the boy becomes will think of this.

Tweet

Copyright © 2022 Richard Wakefield All rights reserved
from Terminal Park
Able Muse Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission