Lord Dog at the Fork

The bowlegged dog looked mighty solid

standing there, lord over the fork of a dirt road.

And as we, she and I, approached in our carriage

her boot eased back from the gas. I quipped:

Let’s let the lord decide which road we’ll travel.

As a poet I like to make vague allusions to things

like the work of another poet, especially knowing

that I stand alone, heel toe and unbalanced, entrenched

in ruts dug by the itinerant poetry wagon that crisscrosses

the solar fields. And as I struggle to keep my look of cool

and maintain a semblance of self-assuredness, a grooved out

beatnik hipster of daydream delusion, a tightrope walker

with Converse treads in the bumpy ditch of the

poetry wagon solo allusion semblance wheel rut—

wait, where was I?— that dog watched our approach.

We watched him. He stood solid. We rolled forward

nearing the point where a decision would need to be made,

because, after all, a man and a woman can’t just climb

into a carriage and set off on a journey together only to

pause indefinitely at the first juncture and be unable

to make a decision about which way to go, left or right,

or whether to fork at all, perhaps choosing to remain

stalled at the crossroads and set up shop selling groceries

and souvenirs to couples traveling on, undaunted

by the big choices. But we, she and I, are watchers

and we put our faith in the lord, knowing in our hearts

that he certainly wouldn’t steer us down

some dangerous path pocked out with wheel cracking divots.

He stood solid. We watched him. He barked one time

and turned to his right, our left, and raised his snout

slightly to sniff the breeze. We looked down that way

and the road curved a slope to where an old covered bridge

passed over a creek. The dog looked to us back over his haunch.

We had come some distance already and didn’t know

where we were at all. We trusted the lord though. In the short time

we had been together, he hadn’t yet steered us wrong.

But guide or not, we, she and I, had to choose our path.

We drove. We paused again. Backpedaled and turned.

That old covered bridge sure was pretty.