Jacob Boyd

Dreaming Dogs

Don’t they too try
To speak, surfacing,
Submerged,
As some phantom
Chases them awake?
 
Don’t they also seem
So often to be after
Something, scratching
At air, splayed
On their backs?
 
And can’t whatever climbs
Free of the teeth
Of its age to sleep
In the predecessor trees
Or caves or dens
 
Desire liftoff and try
To sing—in dreams
If it must, hopefully
Though, in the morning,
In sunlight?
                       
Rising from dreaming
My own dog was drowning,
After I dove in
And took hold of her
Harness, I walked outside
 
Early on a Thursday
In the middle of June
Singing low in my throat
A melody descending
Slow as creation,
 
While our two leashes
Swayed a string
Accompaniment
Across the concrete
And lilacs; and why not
 
Believe that they too--
The wooly ones with
Wolves for great
Great great
Great times twenty
 
Thousand great grandmothers--
In their less-muzzled
Dreams, like us,
Inexplicably lift
From the dust and rise?

--
Jacob Boyd teaches English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he recently graduated from the PhD Program for Writers. His chapbook, Stilt House, selected by Heather McHugh as the winner of the 2018 Emrys Press Chapbook Award, is due out soon. More of his work can be found at Blackbird, Copper Nickel, Iron Horse Literary Review, and elsewhere.