Musculature

The last dog I owned, or — more humanely put, so

I’m told — that I used to live with, she’d follow me

everywhere. She died eventually. I put her down’s

more the truth. It is the truth. And now

                                                                          this dog — that

I mostly call Sovereignty, both for how sovereignty,

like fascination, can be overrated, and for how long it’s

taken me, just to half-understand that. Pretty much my

whole life. Mortality seemed an ignorable wilderness

like any other; the past seemed what, occasionally, it

still does, a version of luck when luck, as if inevitably,

gets stripped away: what hope, otherwise, for suffering?

When did honesty become so hard to step into and stay

inside of, I’m not saying

                                             forever, I could last a fair time

on a small while. Sovereignty sleeps hard beside me. I

pass my hands down the full length of him, like a loose

command through a summer garden. Let those plants

that can do so lean away on their stems, toward the sun.