WATCHING MERDLE ON THE WINTER MORNING OF  MY 50TH BIRTHDAY AFTER LISTENING TO DOBBY  GIBSON READ “AFTER READING KOBAYASHI ISSA’S  ‘THE SPRING OF MY LIFE ON MY 49TH BIRTHDAY’” 

by Jon Thrower 

My alarm goes off:  

a pocket-sized chaos  

ordered with the authority of my thumb,  

a reminder to check on Merdle, the dog,  

who is in the backyard  

where it is 17 degrees  

and the snow is anchored  

to the grass with a mortar of ice.  

Merdle has been out there for 30 minutes.  

I leave the office and walk upstairs  

stopping at the wide bay windows to pour  

a cup of coffee and consider Merdle  

who is doing an inarticulate dance  

around a stuffed pink squeakerless chicken,  

pausing momentarily to smell walked dogs  

a block away, barking and running  

wide loops, 

then stalking the perimeter of the yard, 

then running again, full blast,  

then stopping at her chicken-friend-victim  

and yelping then plopping into a snowy flower  bed onto her back and twisting  

then falling asleep  

upside down  

for 10 minutes  

which tells me:  

I do not know  

how to live.