She's gotten loose again.
I'm talking about the mean dog I keep
behind the rickety fence
of my better sense.
She's all mouth and teeth,
dumb as a box of rocks.
Careful walking down my street--
first you're someone, then just meat.
Down in the viney valley, fragrant and wild,
came a mist-born baby, a minstrel child.
Down the bramble run, in the muddy black
that sweet babe wandered and never came back.
Down the alley, off toward the stacks
my mean dog rambles to hell and gone.
She lives on my tongue, not cute, not young
and I'm sick and sorry, whatever she's done.
I know that mean dog. I have one too. "Dumb as rocks" and "lives on my tongue." If only that fence weren't so rickety maybe that "mist-born baby" would have a chance. This song rings as a confessional hymn to me, Shay, sweet and cathartic, one that every man, woman, and child needs to sing in prayer to the Maker of the baby and the tongue.
ReplyDeleteThis is wonderful, Shay. My heart is full of empathy for that minstrel child in the middle stanza, which is my fave stanza. So innocent, wandering into all the pain of life ahead. Your rhyming, as always, is superb.
ReplyDeleteHa! Mine is hard to get back in the door once she's gotten out. Your close is perfect.
ReplyDelete