Spot

He had springs, you see, in his legs,

and managed to leap and sort of half-scramble

over every form of fence my dad rigged together.

He'd land in the yard next door, then leap again clear

of whatever form of fence they had on that side.

And then he was free, the little shit, on his way to lascivious junkets

several blocks distant, on several sides, the neighborhood over.

He even got it on, we heard, with a big Standard Poodle

over where that kid with the mafia father had moved.

People always were kicking

and throwing things at Spot, and even shot and hit him once, too,

so sonic booms and fireworks sent him slinking undercover.

But little else made him nervous.

Once, when a strange brown Lab came roaming around,

and its play took a turn for the rough, I got scared and could feel its

teeth, and Spot, like some screwy little Lassie—no, like a freakin' wild boar,

tore into the scene and fought the huge dog off.

I can't say I minded

his otherwise scoundrel inclinations;

I had nothing against the diagonal trails

he carved out in surgical time-lapse, chasing down birds and every such sport

across our poor father's baby, bourgeois lawn.

I wasn't horrendously bugged

when he'd "give us the eye" (my mom's observation),

and go on trotting evilly off, though we called him and called him.

I fed him and I bathed him and even hosed down his house.

I even crawled in, once or twice, those long scary nights

of the floods, 1969, I went out and crawled in with my sad sack dog.

And the rich, rude air of our lightless cove

wasn't unpleasant, exactly.

I don't know if I slept, or lay there awake,

or went into my usual stupor.

Whatever, whoever--I don’t know if that terrier punk

was ever devoted to anything

more than the shard of his life. Only my looming father

could make him truly cower, wagging insanely with serious doggy respect.

But even my dad couldn't finally keep him home.

And when he'd run himself out, when he'd finally come back around,

around to the front of the house, to scratch his same scratch every time,

till the paint looked bad on the door,

the ugly initials of a dog who wasn't good,

we could only let him back in.