Eddy

Between darkness and dawn, the vessel that bears my dreams

Is swallowed by a rogue wave and tips

Betraying its cargo to a subaqueous abyss.

Containers spill into the blackness. Memories, musings packed away

Are consumed by saltwater, whirpools, eels.

A hand forces my face beneath the waves and my eyes bulge as I search for a halo that might reveal the surface.

Then the hounds appear.

Two borzoi, beloved companions,

Altered by nightmare.

Once they weighed heavy on the foot of my bed

Once they raced like wildfire through fields of trampled magnolia blossoms

Once they trusted me to come home

Then, for three hundred days and more, they appeared as hauntings:

Mangey

Mutilated

Dead-eyed

Purgatorial dogs.

This morning I lay slumbering in an eddy

When they materialized on my right.

A sable and a roan, formed from vapor

Silky coats

Sound bodies

Reassuring eyes

Flanking my side as I charged toward some unknown end.

I flinched but didn’t sink;

Filled my lungs with salty air

And surrendered to the tide.  

New Orleans, 19 May