["Cape hunting dogs"]

Cape hunting dogs
or starved and ravenous in a bend
 
like hoboes
of a river bed, looking up red in the eye
but coming nowhere nearer
 
and in the past back pasture
of the mind, opening in that wind
blew over them, or Africa,
or in some plains not my own,
came up from the trees and to the pastures,
 
would surround me
 
One dog might go into
without any hatred, only
to stay alive. Or be born that way —
 
to surround me
in this dream, not theirs,
not some other
 
And would be to come home to, there
are the pastures, there the plains
and to the bottoms,
sung only that
land
 
pet, or be petted,
know so well no
fear holds in the red eyes,
and come up to
 
love, that there only
is found
myself
 
and roam there
and come where their
nature can ever
allow, that close,
those wild
and searing being
dogs
 
the wind smells of
coming up out of the
knotted bottoms
 
 
[May 1964, Albuquerque, NM]