Kaleidoscope

There's a journal called Kaleidoscope. No, it's not about looking at mirrored patterns in an altered state of consciousness. It's actually about "Exploring the Experience of Disability through Literature and the Fine Arts". Issue #63 just showed up today and it has this poem:

Bijou the poodle

  -for hs

Bijou the poodle

Pulls Hal the poet

Through the streets

Around the edge

Of Carpenter’s Woods.

Poetical Hal has Parkinson’s and

Bijou has a lust for bikers and runners

That’s not completely wholesome.

Hal can’t let Bijou run loose

In the deep of the woods

And Hal is too kind

to keep Bijou inside.

So, lunging at joggers and jerking on leads

Hal and Bijou whirl on,

Leashed together for blocks and blocks

In orbit around the beautiful woods

And each other.

Because Hal (the poet) and

Bijou (the poodle)

Are both remarkably strong and

Each unwilling to give up

The sweet gyration of

Sliding over the ground

That passes beneath all six of their feet.

--published in Kaleidoscope, 2011

I wrote this BIHC, and sent it off sometime in the middle of treatment. Today, when I read it in the magazine-a lovely glossy, by the way- I wondered who, exactly, I was writing about. Was it the poet hs or me? Whoever I was thinking about, I wish man and dog a good long spell of orbiting some earthy spot between them.