Month After Month
By Janet Holmes

I make my dog happy when he is sick
by taking him for a drive. In the fields outside of town, haystacks

lie rolled and left randomly by the baler--
but my dog is myopic; to him they are cows at pasture,

and he barks and barks, white paws
on the dashboard. We fly past. He's always hated cows--

big, lethargic creatures, and him so small--
he's wagging now, in control.

"What kind of person," my mother asks,
"drives her dog around with her in a car like that?" It's

her way of mourning my unproductive body.
Another month passes. Its white sky.

© Copyright 2001 by Janet Holmes
originally appeared in Humanophone, Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2001
visit her homepage at: http://www.boisestate.edu/english/jholmes/