the junkyard galaxy knocks

for a long hour my dog sits, head cocked

as a ready hand, stares toward the plum-

drenched window where nothing is visible

to me but a neighbor’s TV pulse of blue

light. I wonder what he sees beyond—

or in—the pane. when I first rented

this place with its sweeping ceiling of

exposed beams, I asked the landlady

who’d lived here before, last century,

and it was blind men & women workers

for a local factory. then again, you don’t know

what you can’t see. my dog blinks at the dark,

swivels ears toward the black hole of glass.

sometimes the ceiling drops nubs of carbonized

wood like asteroids onto my white sofa. I pluck

them off carefully. I have a bouquet of

comet shards flung from my roof, but who

brings space debris indoors? I start to believe

it’s whoever’s in the window, and yes,

there are times the other windows howl

a loose-jointed chorus of clattering thwacks,

sounding both fragile and like a fist

punching the glass. I tell my lover over

the wind, if I ever wake up as a dog

you’ll know it’s me. keep the dog with you

if I do. and how will he see that it’s me,

he wants to know. I say,

just look.a window is a portal—

somewhere in space-time there are animals who

see what we can’t conjure even in sleep.

who decides where a roof ends

and the junkyard galaxy begins—

when I say hello love and he peers under

the blinds of my eyelashes, is what he sees

what I think he sees? when I say ability

sometimes I mean a spot in the spherical,

gaseous planet of ability. I blink into

myself, trying to unsmudge the fenestra.

who’s there? I ask my dog. who’s there?