Member Poem

I’m looking for him on my circuit walk,
hoping to spook him with the brown bear.
If the bear doesn’t work, then the lion.
It’s around here I saw him last week,

Doberman in tow, fiend dying to shred my
jugular vein, that thick bull neck chafing
at a leather collar. But he won’t bite, see,
he’s wearing a muzzle. Go ahead and pass,

he said, knowing the law was on his side,
eager to let his dangerous dog off the leash
to sniff the hedgerows along the railway
track. I saw no point in persuasion, but some

in curse. The circus beasts bred a little
jumpiness and the pachyderm roused real
fear, and as for the vile slithering hydra,
its nine heads spitting acid through their

individual guards... How disappointing
that pooch’s cringing whine, that it didn’t bite
one lethal tip, to see two grow in its place,
that it simply expired from fright.

Years later, I circled again, dug up the makeshift
grave, let the serpents’ tongues revive that mangy
corpse. The look on the owner’s face was pure
regret, for his furious and now immortal pet.