Leash Training

means trying to make my dog wear blinders

by shoveling fried hot dog bits in his mouth

that—jaws open & yawn wide—is the size

of a dinner plate sailing toward a woman’s face

as she rounds her car to enter the bank

or a small boy pedaling his bike to the beach

baby toddling with kite ANOTHER DOG

swinging children who’ll probably strangle us

with pigtails or tall grasses or they harbor

every barking friend he can hear all night

all drops of chocolate in the baking cake

he’ll never eat if it doesn’t fall to the floor

& who can blame him his lunge & buck

at a leashed end for wanting to blaze

an aspen grove after a herd of elk when

I can’t make myself ignore a single detail—

the way you said my name or toward the end

breathed yeah yeah yeah until you simply didn’t