The Dog Upstairs

Upstairs one of the women
is walking around. Around
and around…she’s got hard shoes
on, clickety-clack; she stops
and starts, starts and stops.
The dog is doing nothing,
the roommate is doing nothing,
all of them do nothing until
she comes downstairs and leaves.
Sun is just coming up and I
ought to be satisfied that no one
cares what I was doing at the same time,
but I’m crushed for a split second
because I don’t matter in the slightest
to the affairs of the neighborhood.
The poetry, the music, the trenchant
observations, even the struggles —
all of that becomes a shrug to them,
or it will when I’m gone. Even after
I’m gone it will be ignored and no one
will know. The dog upstairs, for instance,
won’t care in the slightest. In some ways
he’s the one I think about the most.
He never would have cared in the first place.
He might have woofed once or twice,
seen me going in or out, but
he wouldn’t care after that — not that
he cared at all. He’s the one
I love the most of all. He cares
not a jot what I do, or did,
or care about as I wring my hands
and fret about the state of things
without me and my earthshaking.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T