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Cyclops and Balthazar
I was not a very good dog in my former life. I bit
My owner, James, often. When he prayed, I howled
His one eye opening. He said I sounded like a cyclops
That had fallen into a ravine. I heard raven. As I said,
I was not a very good dog, more so a ravine
Bringing the howling darkness to my owner’s ears.
A raven that took flight only when watching the other ravens
Lift from the pines like scabs ripped open to reveal
What life runneth under. Towards the end of my life,
A donkey with a white flower and a crown of leaves
Befriended me at the edge of a field. At night,
His head moved “like a veil across the stars”
Revealing for me, for the first time, the stars.
Balthazar, the donkey, once, asked me if I ever thought
Of the consciousness of trees, their reflection
In the river. Or if there was an etiquette to dying.
I said, “stop that. You sound like a man
With his back to heaven.” He said, “someone will
Always have their back to heaven,” then walked
Into a pasture of sheep and died. “Goliath,
Goliath,” said the sheep’s bells around their necks.
“No,” I said. “Balthazar. It is Balthazar that has died.”
And when I called out to him behind the door of the house
Of the dead, the night called back in my own voice.
And I, like a good dog, ran toward it with both eyes closed.
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Roger Reeves is the author of King Me and the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, and a 2015 Whiting Award, among other honors. Best Barbarian, his second book of poems, was a finalist for the National Book Award. His work has appeared in Poetry, The New Yorker, the Paris Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Austin, Texas.
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Olayanju Dada, At the Lagos Dog-Show, acrylic and oil painting on cardboard panel, 2015
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Author: Terence Winch
