Goat over Dog • Susan Rothenberg Oil on Canvas • Gift of Darwin and Geri Reedy • 2004.230.3 Credit: Minneapollis Institute of Art
Not that I’m lording it, mind—
but you are more delicate even
than roses and you run and run
from one side to the other, always
distracted by something, lacking
quite frankly je ne sais quoi, though
you are told you are a purebred this
or a purebred that, which may explain
why you are full of yourself, so utterly
full of yourself, which amuses me
to no end. Moreover, you hear neither
the song of the trees nor the secrets
of clover, yet you seem ridiculously
forgiving and in your nonjudgment,
you remain ridiculously optimistic,
but since there is little of the mountain
in your eyes, in your fur, or in that foolish
tail, it remains unlikely for you to settle
into shapes quiet and sure, essential.
Moreover, you possess, in spare
moments, a sort of elegant melancholy,
and other times, an obtuse spontaneity,
and with this feature you allow yourself
to forget your concerns and fears
so lacking when it comes to howling
out your desires: sex, food, sleep, sex,
food, pat on the head, sleep, howlings
that scatter and fall in the woods like
troubled leaves and feathers and ticks
and antlers and teeming rain and on top
of that, in the moments of nonhowling,
your satisfying eternal gnawing at
some satisfying, eternal bone.
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