by Mark Child
A Neighbor Walks His Old Dog and This Is What I Imagine
He thinks,
How much longer will we do this, boy-o?
His dog is ancient, stiff-legged, imperial,
thin to begin with,
now
thinning out and out and out:
an evaporating mist.
The dog
lifts its nose to the wind:
every sort of life,
every sort of death
within twelve miles explodes in his head,
and he does not think about time at all.
Mark Child is a writer and painter living in Evanston, Illinois. He earned his MFA from Columbia College Chicago, and is the former Director of The Story Workshop Institute. He hopes to get a dog this Spring.