Honesty Is a Dog

Last week, I announced the release of my cat chapbook, Cat Show, which is available on Amazon. To continue celebrating its release, I’m sharing…a dog poem 😆 “Honesty Is a Dog” is a new poem and will come out in my fourth book, The Anonymity of Waiting, which I plan to self-publish in 2024.

Honesty Is a Dog

Honesty is a dog on a leash
walking next to me.

From a young age,
it learned to heel, sit, 
and even play dead.
I say, “Speak” when I want it to
and “Quiet” when I don’t.

Most of the time, it’s quite tame.
But if I’m not paying attention
and run into a friend,
it’ll jerk forward, jump up on the unsuspecting sap,
and paw at them until I say,
“DOWN” a few times.

Sometimes, as I muse in the evening,
it assaults shadows or imaginary things
with barking.

When other peoples’ dogs come around,
it just looks and pants,
or casually sniffs
as long as they keep their distance.
But if one gets close,
it growls a deep-throated warning

because if it breaks free,
if the leash slips from my grasp,
there’s no telling what will happen
in that snarling blur.