LINKS:

Read Professor Gernes' story about creativity and play

With blood down one side

and a tail thick enough

to whip the sap from trees,

he blots the morning sun

from my front walk,

tums a woeful snout

to look at me

then ambles like a drunk

across a dozen feet of lawn,

eyes focused on a country

that is either far or deep.

"Under the neighbor's porch,"

I say over the phone,

"hurt-or rabid-

looking for a place to hide, I think,"

but when the rescue van comes,

flashlights and poles assembled,

nothing stares back

from that shuttered womb;

nothing plays dead

in the earth-scented privacy,

the easeful dust

I thought that he was aimed for.

"I was sure he'd seek darkness,"

I say in defense,

but the woman points,

and there he is again,

claiming the lawn

in sunshine public as a courthouse square,

waiting while we move the cage,

then stepping up to the rubber noose,

offering his head. . .

Some wounds are like that.

They hound us out of the hiding place,

eat away the normal cloak

of decency,

leave us standing in sunlight,

with traffic going by,

leave us saying: Look, look!

Stop your cars!

This is real.

This is what happened.

I want you to believe this.

And I do not want to die.

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