Saturday at the Dog Park

Day Twelve of Thirty Days of Writing

The boy sees that one of the dogs starts to dig a hole

in the middle of the old baseball diamond.

It’s one of the smaller ones, a white little pup

with floppy ears and a mop of curly fur.

It scratches at the dirt, turns up

a few pawfuls of earth,

and walks away, bored with the task.

The boy goes to the mark

in the ground, and the other dogs

swirl around him: German shepherds,

Labs, two Huskies, a wincing Afghan

who doesn’t like to walk in the dirt.

They leave the boy alone, sniffing at each other,

and suddenly he is no longer afraid

of the neighbor’s Doberman,

or even of his own dog, which prefers his sister.

He is the King of Dogs,

and walks proudly among them.

They will dig together. He will finish the hole,

and claim it for them. He digs with his hands.

The King of Dogs doesn’t need a shovel;

he is one of them, after all, and so he claws

into the ground with his short fingernails.

The dogs leave him behind, moving quickly,

a whirlwind of tails and paws and noses.

The boy keeps digging, even as his eyes sting with tears.

If his mother asks, he’ll say the wind is too strong.

He puts his head down, pulls out handfuls of earth.

What does a King need with dogs?

He will dig a hole right through to China.

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