Fable*

How often can we read Aesop
and not become moralists?

To hear the mourning whines
of the
black dog
and not imagine his life better
in human hat and leather boots
cracking smart-mouthed jokes at
our expense?

To see the cat watching two squirrels
clatter down roughly falling bark and vines
scolding each other.
Do we imagine the cat intrigued?-- not
by them as prey, or food,
but watching, intent,
a greater understanding of squirrels her goal.

To start guiltily
at the last YOWP!
of the whining, lonely dog next door
who discovers that shoes,
when thrown,
are worse than an empty dog house.


*a poem I wrote in 1997 and re-edited upon finding it in a stack of papers, today.