On First Glance

Originally posted 1/7/2010.

First thing to catch my eye
in my living room this morning
is a Tasmanian wolf —
said by most
to be extinct but, well,
there it certainly is,
at least this morning
in this living room. Spider legs
and stripes,
car crusher jaws,
it stands calmly blinking
in my salvage yard
of an apartment;
its presence makes sense
as my place is full of discards,
secondhands,
re-purposed items
finding new lives; the animal
must have spun in here by chance
when the earth
passed through its dimension,
and decided to stick around.
I can do something
with anything I get my hands on;
maybe that appeals to it. I decide
to name the beast Johnny
and it looks up when I call it,
as confident in its power
as a myth. I offer it a drink
and it begins to lap,
the long pale tongue flickering,
not caring that
it’s going to become
a metaphor for something
once it blinks back
into its usual state
of not being.  It’s safe here
in a room that’s become
a shrine to the art
of taking something
that looks wrong on first glance
and making it work,
and to my surprise it curls up
on the bare pine floor
and falls away
into hopeful sleep.