Dog Sleeping in Abstract Sunlight

A poem

March 3, 2008

Dog Sleeping in Abstract Sunlight

Our basset hound's camouflaged fur
resembles Robert Motherwell's
"Elegy to the Spanish Republic."
Big black ovals bloom between
gray and brown blurs with one well-
licked scar on her white shoulder.
She dozes in slices of the sun,
dragging her weight across the floor,
tracking warmth this freezing afternoon.
Her long ears lift toward a freight train
passing two blocks away telling the same
old clacking jokes to laughing tracks.

-Steve Benson