Dogs Everywhere

pinch us from our dream of solitude beyond flesh in thought made flesh and the blood of birth brutal love that reaches across the sacred moat we stand in this room so confident in our untouchability we are all a river of blood we are each the eddies and flows of this river this blood I reflect and pull from my reflection an image of you pinched from my dream of solitude beyond flesh shame pride all made flesh in your kindness I am invaded my machine gun says I love you in the same language that your machine gun says I love you sitting by a warm fire with dogs everywhere the cold shadowy piñon and juniper trees stretch out endlessly beneath an almost full moon a highway dotted line of fast-moving bubbles of warmth too far away to hear I think of you in the freezing spray of little waterfalls making little sculptures in the slow song of tree standing up to slow and jagged winds in the raised hand of smoke above this home grace and beauty resisting emptiness (Julian Bach Smith)