David Donlon - Poem

I took the dogs, leashed, across the parkinglot
to their regular place -- a little penninsula
elbowing out into a marsh, and set them free
to do their business, uncontrolled, in the bushes.

A little trail there winds to the tip of land, and
        sometimes
I'll follow the dogs a little ways, to make sure
they aren't eating something dead -- I did that night
        too,
because the full moon beckoned with its silver light.

The low mist and rising fog, the sounds of restless
waterbirds startled by the dogs, the trees,
the dead limbs across the moonlit path -- it makes, I
        thought,
a tiny spot of old Virginia here amid the tire noise from
        route 44;
edged by a mall on one side, across the flowing creek;
with a business complex on another, and, of course
our apartment's parkinglot just behind.

But from where I stand I can't see any of it,
and when the eighteen-wheeler's are gone from the
highway, all I hear are the frogs and sleepy waterbirds --
a distant owl, maybe, and the crickets.

Isn't this perhaps the tiniest bit of wildness left, here
in the middle of Lynhaven?

We scared a rabbit on our way back -- munching grass,
it had been, but our racket spooked it, and it tore off
        behind
a building, a little streak of motion in the moonlight.

Ada, the most alert of the two dogs returning from their
        business,
observed the running rabbit with semi-interest; she made no
        move
toward it, content instead to mark where the rabbit sped behind
        the building.

Cassie gave a cursory sniff but kept her eye on our door, and
        we
were inside in a moment, knocking the dirt from our feet.

Of course the pair of them slept, twitching paws and muffled yips
        like
most nights, attesting to some great chase -- some might suppose
it was the rabbit they chase, and cornering it against the cold
brick of the apartment building, made a moonlit meal of it --
        but I know better than that.

Sure, in their dreams, they chased a host of furry things, but
I know that when the tired of it, they returned home, where the
food bowl overflows, and a good thick sliding glass door makes
        the sleeping easy.