Mary B. Moore
July 4
The sun out at 2 pm, I and the dog
sit in shade, one of us notebooking,
the other clawing a wood-knot
in the deck. She writes
four-arced lines, palimpsests
of themselves, hayfork’s
signature or rake’s. She’s after the knot—
would gouge it out.
It eyes the layered
pebbles under the deck,
their O’s and eggs,
white, gray and brown.
A river’s lap and lick and knick
purled them into rondure.
The boy next door shouts,
“You’re lying,” at who knows
who, another nought.
Tonight the fireworks will boom and bloom,
mums, roses that mimic war, joys
that buoy no animal
but us. For now the dog unable
to sleep, rests, her nose
on paws, her ears’ felt triangles
perked this way and that:
she’s vigilant in case not
enlarges, a giant maw, rock-toothed
under foot and deck.
Or maybe I’m vigil and wary,
and she’s just sun-warmed, her ears
ajar. A knot tops her head,
occipital, it’s called,
and the middle furrow,
a silk-furred path from head
to nose and now, inborn,
bone deep, without atone.
Worry is my bone.
Mary B. Moore is the author of Amanda and the Man Soul (Emrys Press, 2017) winner of the Emrys Press poetry chapbook competition, selected by Dorianne Laux; Flicker (Broadkill River Press, 2016), winner of the Dogfish Head Poetry prize, judged by Carol Frost, Baron Wormser, and Jan Beatty; Eating the Light (Sable Books 2016), winner of the Sable Books Chapbook Contest, judged by Allison Joseph; and The Book Of Snow (Cleveland State University Poetry Center, 1998). Recent work appears in Georgia Review, Gettysburg Review, Nimrod, Fire and Rain, Ecopoetry of California, Orison’s 2017 anthology, Poem/Memoir/Story, the Nasty Women Anthology, Minerva Rising, and Cider Press Review Best of Volume 16. Her website is marybmoorepoetry.com.
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