The Other Side of Dusk
        

       Of late, the older dog -
       the nine year old -
       has taken to the stars.
       Legs folded underneath
       her hoary coat,
       she is no longer the dreamy,
       couch-ensconced vagabond.
       Here she cocks her head,
       as if the sky were
       holding forth a leash 
       and all its dangling promises.

       Many years before,
       I lived beneath 
       a storied house.
       My neighbor spent his days 
       dying there;
       the illness of the time 
       held him in its thrall.
       And yet the last year of his life
       I watched him poured  
       into each night
       through the eyepiece of a telescope.

       And I, here now,
       have yet to lift my sights;
       choose instead
       the horizontal lie, 
       of fields, of hills, 
       by day, by light
       to dark imaginings
       the other side of dusk.
       The stars above, 
       the dirt below,
       have yet to summon me.


       
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