Walking the Dog

Don't read the following if you don't like poems about bodily functions (or early drafts of poems about the aforementioned).  That's what I get sometimes, though, when I think about what to write while walking the dog.

                                                               Walking the Dog


                                            Although she’s the one on the leash, I often
                                            envy my dog’s freedom when we take a walk.
                                            She seems to see the whole world as her
                                            territory to smell and taste and mark
                                            there and there and there. And when her inner
                                            GPS finally finds the right spot,
                                            she stakes a much more monumental claim.

                                           How strange I must appear to her, always
                                           walking in straight lines on sidewalk or
                                           the left side of the street, facing traffic;
                                           never stopping to sniff or squat or lift a leg;
                                           confining my business to home, the one place
                                           she’d never think to soil; and marking the same
                                           spot over and over: here, here, here, here, here.