July 15-21, 2019: Poetry from Roberta Beach Jacobson and Brian Rihlmann

Four Haiku

broken as a
kaleidoscope –
still beautiful

~~~

each semester
a new
tattoo

~~~

we are never
alone –
dust bunnies

~~~

working lunch
crunching
numbers

He Wasn’t Mine

The roommate left a note:
his appointment with the needle
was tomorrow,
if we wanted to say goodbye.

I’d never had much to do with him.
He wasn’t mine,
and I’m not really a dog person.

But I went outside
and opened the gate
and stepped inside
where he stood, waiting.

The cancer had spread,
and he’d grown thin,
his coat a dull brown.

He wouldn’t lay down anymore.
He just stood around,
looking at things, not sleeping.

His arthritic hip made it difficult
to stand up again.

But it was more than that.
I think he knew.
If he laid down,
it would be the last time.

He was savoring
what was left of it.

If he was a farm dog,
he’d have wandered off
into the woods by now.

But he was fenced in,
like the rest of us.

I checked the kitchen window.
Nobody.

I got down beside him, whispered,
“Sorry for all those times
I yelled at you to shut up
when you were barking.”

He looked at me,
nuzzled my hand a bit.
I smiled and said,
“Can you can pass some of that
along to me, when you go?”

Fat March snowflakes fluttered down,
covering us both,
as I knelt on the frozen ground
and stroked his old head.