Torchie’s Book of Days – Poem Three

   SHARE THIS ARTICLE

3)

Marvin our borzoi half-sits on the couch:

a canine bird marking out the sky. I am in

eagle pose—thumbs at the brows, eyes

in their 3,000-mile gaze. Bruce Springsteen

yowls out of the speakers,

the world’s dogsbody. I’m sure by now

I’m really going to miss the world

when my day comes, despite the fact

our military chiefs are all white-hot

for war over the Arctic Circle and I’m a card-carrying member

of the breed who stands

to fail at living. A journalist just wrote

when all of us grow up

we’ll fall in love with Earth,

but somehow this is hard to put back

into words. Do you suppose, dear Readership,

that nonstop sense of feeling almost fraudulent

might be honesty at its most thoroughbred? I’m halfway in

a deep amour with you. That’s what you might call

a superovershare, but this could be to a T

what the great earbob we’re walking on

needs.  None of this

<

means a shooting war is likely

at the North Pole any time soon, assures the AP,

so you can relax your stance. Springsteen belted his body

of work past the glockenspiel and all those faded Tunnel of Love

Express Tour t-shirts at Pittsburgh’s Soldiers

and Sailors Memorial Hall with the Houserockers. At that concert,

I grew twelve years

younger than my true age. O darlin’ Billy, O whoever

draws near, I give to you

a full-on blank page—that doctrine of softness.

That scorch song. That fiefdom. I kindly ask you to draft

a love requitedness test: