"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"
- W. B. Yeats:  The Second Coming

Dachshund

Bred to burrow after badgers,
what's he doing here?

Terrorizing the underwear
behind my couch.

Is he a true hund,
or just a pan-fried sausage
with a Bluto chest?

I wonder what they called him
back then, in the Black Forest,
when dogs were dogs.

Tracker? Hunter?
Try: Baron Von Putt-Putt Tootsie Roll.

I'm Scot myself.
My people once sacked York.

No, this isn't York.
It's Plano, Texas.

Don't think a Dachshund and a Scot
can't sack Dallas from here.

Until then, we play our little game:
What rough ****** slouches toward my underwear?

Somewhere between the dream of what it could be
and what it wanted to be, this poem hightailed it
out of town. Down the road it went, careening into
hedgerows, jostling small birds from their resting
time. Running for all it's worth, out to the sea cliffs
then arrested, stock still, before all that immensity.
Chagrined by such a rash attempt at escape, even
blushing a bit, it wondered about strange things:
What would it be like to be a badger? To always be
dressed in all those lovely stripes? To never have bad
wardrobe days?  Or what about an otter, with such
strong muscles, and an utter delight for swimming?
To never really feel the cold? These are the things a
poem can wonder about, when it isn't quite sure, just
right then, in the present moment, how to be a poem.