David Jackson

Dog Run Over

The dog lay in the street
a small
mass
of torn hair and blood pressed in pavement
and eyes hanging loose from the sockets.
and puddled liquid
soaking into rocks
quivering like
wind through light lines.
Once it licked and barked
its way about the house
chasing Boo and Boo him.
I didn’t see the car that hit him.
Was it someone I knew?
or a stranger driving swiftly on
an unknown road.
Couldn’t they have stopped
to make sure
to at least see
and mumble something
or other.
What would Boo say?
Could I tell him
it’s only sleeping
would he notice
it wasn’t moving
at
all

Dog Run Over Poem copyright Donald Wayne Jackson 1989

_Passage_

He gestured somewhat
grandly
and coffee sloshed the rim
of his mug like a tsunami
done in small.
“The world I have traveled
is not round,” he said musingly,
“it is not round”
and contemplated drowning grounds,
divining the future
from the wake of catastrophe.
His face fell into ruin
and he swam away
into a brief ocean–
the images of a life
spread upon the waves.
As he drifts now,
he believes himself wood,
current-charted,
hungry,
unwilling
to wash ashore

Passage poem copyright Rebecca Jackson

I have an obsession with time
and tick tocking clocks tremble at my touch,
tickle my thought.
The people in the street notice it
little,
and when they do…with regret and sadness,
Greenness and water…brownness and decadence
and again the same.
How quant and soft,
And sleeping children turn into proud men
And soft dreams at night and morning crisply cupping coffee.
I sigh softly at such times
and touch morning with welcome fingers.
I am not afraid of time as brown leaves and dying men
turn full circle,
and trembling fingers brown with age,
and fond memories of time were
so gently smiling, I turn my thoughts to the morn,
I remember all.
I regret
nothing