I'm in love with the basset hound that lives in the apartment behind ours. I like to watch him wander around in his backyard from my office window. He seems so aimless, like me. This goes out to him:

In a vice of brown-white skin, a basset hound’s

trapped by the hitch of travelling. Low-slung,

legs short as the span between my wrist

and forearm, it ploughs though snow and lists

its nose to dirt, ears to swell. It hears

above din of engine and yowl, the odd fear

it can’t name to growl: “Come home, Come here!”

At dusk, the biggest sky shrinks for the smallest cur.

From stands of ash to gaze on winter

it shuffles in brevity’s fur. The basset hound

lives by aping the mottled ground.

Take that, NaPoMo! Now I'll get back to work on my essay/memoir/thingee, thanks.