Dreaming

I awoke in a body.
Different than the one
I inhabited moments before.

One in which I held
a small dog, stroked her head,
but didn’t hatch an evil plot.

No, I sat outside a café in Paris,
sun warming my face,
a book open on the table.

I stopped reading
to consider the dog at my fingertips,
where she was as she slept on my lap—

perhaps in the body of a Great Dane
traipsing through a stream, trailing
a squirrel through a strand of poplar trees.

Or maybe she became human
in order to search me out, to inform me
the generic dog food had to go.

Wherever she was,
her wagging tail suggested
considerable action was afoot.

Much more action
than can be said of this body
in which I now awake.

I could not say who inhabited it
before I got here and why
it was left in such a state.

Don’t get me wrong,
I’m happy to share, I only wish
whoever it was

had the courtesy to get up
and brew a fresh pot of coffee
before I arrived.

Published by asaur