Poetry | Underneath | Mary Ann Schaefer

Underneath listen
1.
deep in the city thicket
in a fenced foursquare
yard wedged between
dwelling and alleyway,
the dog is out there
barking, not just
occasionally
like a syncopated
woof-pause-listen-
woof, but higher
pitched, frenzied
woowoowoo
woowooWoowoowoo
until you yell out
the window
hey knock it off
already, but now
that you’re looking
the yelping tempo
redoubles just in case
you really don’t
get it:  I am
a D - O - G
and I am about
to make a K-i-LL so
come look, so ok, oK,
you're looking all around
the shrubs and rockery,
and the dog
wants to faint
because you can’t
smell the fear.

2.
try it on for size:  lie
on your belly for
200 million years
or so, fuse your
ribs and your vertebrae,
just so, into a slow
motion dome of patch-
work keratin, crawl
in and pull your
calm along
the earthen bed
grazing, basking,
rinsing in the clean
rain until one day
your escape becomes
inexplicably uproarious,
startling you to jettison air —
a long hissssssssssssssss —
deflating the lungs to make
room for retractable
extremities so now
your fear can be
worn like
a rock.

3.
maybe stumbling over
a turtle the size of a
salad plate in the
ragweed lawn so far
from belonging is not
random, this cold-
blooded creature
blinking from inside
go away at your dis-
trustful self out there
blinking back  please
don’t come out,  thunder
pounding in the ears,
fight or flight, more
shocking still the deep
silence of such intense
regard like lake reflections
of clouds wisping by, dancing
ghosts of curiosity hardly
noticing first one then
the other slipping out
of danger and into
the surprise of
surviving
being seen.