Grey Wigglebutt, a Saluki from Qatar, whined on the drive to Vallejo because he thought he was being given away. His keepers sat driver and shotgun, watching life drain from the hills, the landscape pure strip, pure mall. “Settle down!” they repeated, until they gave up and settled down themselves.
But at the reunion, but there. Grey’s cousins were there. The Borzois, The Greyhounds, and more Salukis like Grey. Grey played hard on leash with an errant hound until we stopped him from hanging himself, then he laid down in the cool grass and thought of nothing but now.
At reunion’s end we set up a racetrack for Grey and his friends, and he ran nothing like in the sands of Qatar, and we felt guilty there were no dusty rabbits. So a wise woman read his tarot cards, and he laid his head on her dirty feet, and dreamt of nothing but now.
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Source material in tone and spirit: B.H. Fairchild’s poem “Angels.”
“Poetry, as a highly allusive art form, fundamentally relies on the poet’s ability to quote, to copy, and to ‘play’ with others’ language, and poetry scholars and commentators equally rely on their ability to quote the poetry they are discussing. In fact, poets generally acknowledge that essentially everything they do in their workaday lives, from making their poems to writing about poetry to teaching poetry, builds on the work of others.” —Code of Best Practices in Fair Use for Poetry
