black dog

The late grey day presses inky misery through hollow walls
where he lies, abandoned to the hungry hellhound of the night.
Loping on long legs, coat matted and alive with fleas, it leaps
and settles on his tired chest, amber eyes like stinking pus.

Outside, the unlatched gate (where beauty and her loving heart
departed) batters and bangs on screeching hinges, hopeless now.
He strains to lift his bones but the black beast, his burden, weighs down.
At daybreak, soaked in sleepless sweat, he shuts the blind, denies

entry to spectacular dawn. Glorious shards of diamond white
will daily spear and soon will pierce his gloom, just not today.

Prince Edward Island

Red plumes of dust behind my rolling wheels
are torn aloft by ever whipping winds.
In each field a leaning barn will lurk
behind a skirt of rippling grass.

Black rag crows flung between plowed furrows
caw then soar, now bank and dive
behind the tractor's wobbly wheels to
compete with gulls blown in from briny shores.

Red roof, white church, and crumbling homestead
with crooked mailbox and lupin ditch,
nestle under azure skies where great
eagles circle, beady eyes on land.

From a high green hill my eye can spy
the silver thread curving on blue sea;
a mooring rope lest this isle should float
beyond the pull of land and drift free.

Steel piles driven deep into bedrock
carry life and limb and cherished hearts,
over swirling white-capped waves, to these
home shores where time's footfalls gently press.