Emily ScudderListen

Old Dog

It’s the way they are together.
It’s the way they are in no rush, no rush at all.

He sniffs.
He licks the inside of her forearm.

His owner, she looks off –
up into the trees.

We do this: wait
(for the oldest of all kinds).

The old dog outside my office window
holds tumors beneath his belly skin.

Like udders, they swing.

Natural Instincts

If you leave a soda can on the lawn
bees begin to hover. They know to come.

Ants lift a blue chip.

Nature rivets. Screws me
into dramas, in the kitchen, past the yard.

Behind the house a black snake tried
to swallow a brown frog. It gave up.

Slithered to the brush.

Gleaming in snake spit, the huge frog
sat, stunned in the sun.

A hamster eats her gummy stillborn, now
more protein than progeny.

Like the tree knows when to fork itself.

10 whales washed up.
8 bottle-nosed dolphins too.

Volunteers came quickly. They found
some alive and picked at. The gulls did it.

On stretchers, the dolphins clicked & clicked.

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