So I want to say on a lighter note, but probably not.
There's a dog in this poem.
That's a lighter note.
That's what I have to say before this poem.
It's called "Musculature."
"The last dog I owned--
or more humanely put, so I'm told,
that I used to live with--
she followed me everywhere.
She died eventually.
I put her down is more the truth.
It is the truth.
And now this dog that I mostly call Sovereignty,
both for how sovereignty, like fascination, can be overrated,
and for how long it's taken me just to half
understand that pretty much my whole life.
Mortality seemed an ignorable wilderness like any other.
The past seemed like, what occasionally, it still does.
A version of luck when luck, as if inevitably, gets
stripped away.
What hope, otherwise, for suffering?
When did honesty become so hard to step into and stay inside
of?
I'm not saying forever.
I could last a fair time on a small while.
Sovereignty sleeps hard beside me.
I pass my hands down the full length of him,
like a loose command through a summer garden.
Let those plants that can do so lean away
on their stems toward the sun."
I do feel the need to say that my dog is not
named Sovereignty.
His name is Ben, and that seems as it should be.
But I like the idea of a dog named Sovereignty.
But it's hard to call out, so.
Just try it some time.