Walter Bargen: Dogs of Beauty
Somewhere in some other place
their kind are wild, meant for
the verdant and exotic, and on
the west slopes of the coastal
range, near Palos Verdes, where
the foothills run down and are lost
in a salty desert of blue waves,
they are wild again, having wandered
from watered lawns, crossed over
tennis courts, followed paved drives
back into the bleached foothills.
The cry of peacocks is the cry of
those denied, of those who leave
and come back offering a handful
of seeds and an upraised arm,
and perhaps that’s why, after luring
a gaudy male to perch near him,
he caught it, grabbing its spurred,
scaly legs, and held it for his friend
hiding in the bushes, to come running
with the dog, and while waiting
he was careful not to stare into
its glossy black eyes, heeding his mother’s
warning that it’d peck his eyeballs out,
and then he’d be dumb a as bird, if not blind.
He set the peacock free,
if that’s what it is to be chased by
the dog; its awkward wings beat
the ground, and in defense, its emerald
tail fanned wide above its outstretched
head, an iridescent forest filled with
unblinking stares, each eye lined
with a delicate fluttering mascara.
Within the feather of fear that
tickled their laughter, in the flight
they didn’t fully understand but
would be their’s soon enough,
in the growing distance between
who they were and the untouchable
thing they were becoming, there was
this irresistable slavering beauty.
Copyright 2018 Walter Bargen
Walter Bargen has published 21 books of poetry. Recent books include: Days Like This Are Necessary: New & Selected Poems (BkMk Press, 2009), Trouble Behind Glass Doors (BkMk Press, 2013), Perishable Kingdoms (Grito del Lobo Press, 2017), and Too Quick for the Living (Moon City Press, 2017). His awards include: a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the William Rockhill Nelson Award. He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2009).
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