waking early

_____Dogs do speak, but only to those
_____who know how to listen.
_____–Orhan Pamuk

_what carries me
through blind day
_____and shuttered night –
cock-a-doo mornings
when I splinter incrementally:
_____two, four, sixteen?

little duffle, little keg
little stone lion –
rollicking swing-dance
_____at my knee
puma cries
skittering thru wet lawn
fringed prints across patio

_what lasts till velvet falls –
final scraps of hours
_____slip mind’s periphery?
his sun-warm body
_____silver & pewter
breathing slow rhythm
against my hip

Ann Howells edited Illya’s Honey for eighteen years. Recent books: So Long As We Speak Their Names (Kelsay Books, 2019) and Painting the Pinwheel Sky (Assure Press, 2020). Chapbooks Black Crow in Flight and Softly Beating Wings were published through contests. Ann’s work appears in Nimrod, Magma, and Crannog, among others.