San Antonio Dogs

Dear Happiness: Tonight a trio of dogs

sat at the crosswalk waiting for the light to change.

Red. I stopped. They trotted across the street, two mottled mutts

and a Chihuahua whose legs spun like wheels to keep up.

Right across San Pedro and down the sidewalk,

their tails up, noses pointed toward purpose. Dear Happiness:

I never cared for dogs, but they’re everywhere here.

When I miss my mother, who was once the mother

of all happiness, I see dogs. San Antonio dogs.

The one in Olmos Basin, a scrappy mix of ribs and hunger

hurrying across the road. Or the stray I found panting

in a shred of shade under an agave in whose muddy eyes

spun the tires of the Buick LeSabre from the summer vacation

when my mother nearly drove us into the lake. Dear Happiness:

What laughter when flecked with mud! Or so it once was,

when laughter was easy. More often now, I drive Frio Avenue

to work. Not that there’s not happiness in high tension

wires, in bouncing over the tracks by the building

with Monterrey Lounge faded on bricks, where knotted curtains

in wide-open windows swing. Where, on the roof

of the garage, a bullish dog rushes out to the rusted edge

barking down onto the street. He runs so fast, I fear

he’s not going to stop. One day when that dog wasn’t there

I circled the block, waited at the curb,

but vacancy jabbed sharper than his barks. How thin

the air felt without him guarding the roofline, without his body,

dirty white, like tissues my mother used to tuck into her Sunday purse.