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Poetry

Tim Mayo - 1 Poem

 


The Loneliness of Dogs


About spelling the human masters
were never wrong, making me wonder
at what age did their cleverness reveal
that god spelled backwards was dog?
Later in their lives, a larger orthography
came to define them in their own letters
somewhere between animal and angel.

But for me it's always been a dog's life.
And if a deity ever
entered my shaggy existence,
it was only the unlettered moon
to whom I howled all those nights
when a restless emptiness slipped
over my fur like a black glove,

and I became the hand that fed me.

 

 


Tim Mayo’s poems have appeared in The Atlanta Review, Del Sol Review, The Rose & Thorn, The Cold River Review, Paris/Atlantic, Four Corners, Mannequin Envy, Poet Lore, 5 A.M. and The Chrysalis Reader. Two of his poems have garnered "International Merit Awards' from The Atlanta Review, and in 2000, He was a Semi-Finalist in the Discovery”/The Nation Poetry Contest. In 2006 he received a Vermont Artist & Writers Grant from the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, and recently his first collection Dreaming of a Dependable Force was chosen as a Finalist/Runner up for the Man Street Rag Poetry Book Award. It will appear in January 2008.