This poem was published in The Avenue Journal, Issue X: Dogs
Sleeping Dogs
by Wendy Taylor Carlisle
“Let’s let sleeping dogs tell the truth.”
– Forrest Gander
The dogs sleep and dream of kibble and walks and chasing a ball.
The dogs do not mention what they know of sit! and stay! and come here!
When the dogs wake, the pup barks wild and loud. He looks ferocious.
When the old bitch wakes, she growls.
When the dogs wake, they do not know who chose the kibble they eat.
When they wake, they know they will have food and play, and a walk in the park.
We slept as the park owners who fed and amused us, played a long game.
We slept and dreamed the old truths were our protection.
We slept as those owners chuckled about our useless growling.
We slept as if freedom would stand and woke to a fully armed neighbor, a new order.
Let’s let dogs be proxy for the liberty we had before the din of sit! and stay! rose.
Let’s let dogs hold the old world, food, a ball, a long, green walk, as it shatters.
Let’s let dogs come clean about diktats, explain the long canine game, the waking.
Let’s let them call for barking and for dogged persistence. Let us listen.
Wendy Taylor Carlisle Lives and writes in the Arkansas Ozarks. Is the author of four books and five chapbooks. Her poems have been published most recently in About Place, Terrain, and are forthcoming in Heartland Review and South Florida Poetry Journal and anthologized in Attached to the Living World: a New Ecopoetry Anthology. Find her at www.wendytaylorcarlisle.com