A Girl and her Dog on Skunk Hollow Road

The black bitch wags its mud crusted tail
At something the little girl has found

Next to a rust covered trailer
Missing its skirt like a green-sleeves whore

Servicing state fair farm cocks quickly
Behind a stained yellow tent in October.

Frost with wood smoke and odor of fried dough
Told us that winter was coming.

Of course it did and hasn't left yet
On Skunk Hollow Road in April

Where suddenly someone shouts out,
Sticking her head outside a storm window,

Grimacing at the girl and her dog
Whose tail will freeze again tonight

When they chain her to one of the junks,
Hoods up, next to the snowmobile

By which the little girl tosses her find
Or saves it perhaps amid the rubble

To rub a belly that's downside up
Where even the grit is upside down.