Creative Traditional:

[ljgp]

Bob

He can't keep straight the joint between his front leg thighs
and their pawed fores, dangling limply as the legs are lifted
nails scrape the concrete, wetting with blood.

The narrow hips lean, slanting one way in stillness;
the planting of his feet give no foundation only a joint
for the barrelled torso and bowed head to roll.

In the eyes a look of bewilderment
at his sudden fragility, no means to fight the growth
over these limbs - once taut springs - of decay.

His cornering and turning and three sixty degree spinning
warranted new words
his playful stoops and spins became whirly gigs.

Dad creeps behind his back, claws and anger mocked with growl
sends Bob off in wide eyed horror spinning away to return
swooping close to the clasping hands then veering at the last.

At home after the short bursts a body wound so tight
and so quickly to uncoil, begins to wind again
in sleep rabbits run past, wits wont join his twitching legs.

sometimes he sits like the sphinx
or with backlegs joining the tail outstretched behind
the flatness of his tailed rump like a sting ray skirting the sea bed.

Or he sits upright, able to follow the clockwork of my parents moves
half past five; time for mum to return from work
the front gate's unlatching sounds, ears jolt,

eyes widen to search for his rubber toy, walking towards the door
growling with pleasure accompanying the sqeaking
of the rubber between his biting jaws.

Seemingly too refined a dog to mix with his own
returning from forays to join us bipeds on an invisible lead
when the sight of another dog interrupts his smell inspection of the greenery.

To see him now walk as though on ice behind dazed drugged up eyes
waking life becoming like the disemebodied dream of rabbits
streaming past the eyes cased within a twitching body.

Feeling now unwilling to stretch into the sinews
of a body quicker in its passing than ours.

So we likely see him come and go
like bending our knees and necks
to follow the tight arcs he traced in the fields.