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The Rising Tide


by Bill Yarrow


The new world is filled with old people
with good posture and a disdain for odd
postures. I'm just a rental dog myself
looking for the guardian of starlight
peeing on the expiring parking meters
and barking up all the wrong trees.

A decade ago, I was new myself. They
put me in the factory next to six-fingered
Marie and gave me tea biscuits and sugar
water at four-hour intervals. My hands
crumpled from the iron work and only
a jug-handle yoga pose could unbend me.

And so will it be with my soulless effigy
as proleptic ratiocination seeps into itself
and disappears, as the polished ego dips
directly into dullness, as Ivan Karamazov
deliquesces, as Imlac loses his footing, as
Lear begins to stink, as Pangloss rises again.

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