The Service Revolver
Sixty-six pounds of snarling anger In the only path to safety For six pounds of cold fear.
A chain squeezes suddenly around the honey-colored throat And the anger moves on,
At first reluctantly, and then Loping along at a goodly pace Wet nostrils flared and quivering.
Ready to sift and scoop up Anything of taste or interest Along the dark and lamp-lit way.
Walking my dog Daisy Whose name belies her vigor and strength Barely controlled by a pact initialed But never formally ratified.
She leads me through the valley of my loneliness Which I measure in the scrape and echo Of footsteps having no place to go.
Walking under an archway of sparse leaved bracken And thick limbs of eucalyptus Thoughts swarm around us In no particular rhyme or meter.
Like the personal black hole Pulling me towards an eventual horizon In gossamer strands of infinity.
And another: at what point in our lives Does it become reasonable To contemplate suicide.
To feel the coolness and weight of one's service revolver Against the weight of continuing to be?