In My Dreams

by Scanners

Visiting Home

I have darkened in dark rooms
full of transparent chemicals.
I have listened to minotaurs with
bachelor's degrees in business laughing
over skyscraper coffees clouded over
the top with sugared disillusionment.
I have guffawed with my black friend,
pawed and tailed and limping now
from a sleepy leg, my scruffy dog A.J.
in years past when we had white and cold
winters. When he pulled me on my bike
in the summers. When I was younger.
When I picked up after him, because I lived
with my parents then. I have seen him today
not his chipper self, barely able to shout death
threats in his own barking tongue
to the mailman. I have darkened nothing today
in dark high school rooms, but used
a digital camera to catch this legend,
this limping hound, looking tired and ready
to return to his nap, and sigh.