Travels With Cowboy
A long drive down the Central Valley,
cool then warm, the kind of day in March
when the season can go either way,
back to winter or ahead to spring;
a day that draws new grass up
in unplowed fields and hazes the distance
silver.
And here we are at last
at our motel, the one that welcomes
“one small pet.” I take our young Shepherd
to the doggy corner,
and for the first time Cowboy lifts his leg,
as old dog Taco used to do
against this very cottonwood.
And then he turns
and watches me with the old dog’s gaze.
The tepid air, no longer winter
and not quite spring, takes me
back to walking other dogs
between hedge and freeway fence.
Dogs now dead look me in the eye
in the guise of this new Cowboy.
And I don’t know where
this can take me
except the lonely gap in the fence
where drifters slip
from southbound lane to shrubbery,
past the long-haul truckers,
out of here by dawn,
and all the other chances
of losing, leaving, and moving on.
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