A stray black dog, cast out into the west Texas night,
approached me sidelong, feigning a sniff of the ground as I stood with a scotch and topo chico on an agate sidewalk, full of thanksgiving and wondering why we carry on when logic says we should lay down and let the world till us under.
I pet her or his (gender a blur of fur wrapped in shadow), back, stroked briefly the head, feeling a mat of thorny grass entrenched in my ronin freind’s unwashed coat, in place of a collar and tag.
We exchanged this moment, passed something between us if not just this poem, then perhaps a brief moment of solidarity in a world trying to run us over.