By Paul Willis
My red-furred dog is floating, paddling
under the dark branches of bay, the summer alder.
How green the pool he courses in, circling
in the eddies of leaves, bits of foam
from a careful rapid catching the corners
of his mouth. My red-furred dog, he
smiles as he always does in the pool of green,
this quiet pool that is lucent as an apple kiss.
Paul Willis has published six collections of poetry, the most recent of which is Little Rhymes for Lowly Plants (White Violet Press). His latest book is a YA Elizabethan time-travel novel, All in a Garden Green (Slant). He is a professor of English at Westmont College and a former poet laureate of Santa Barbara. Also by this poet: "A Very Little Thing" and "A Story of Hands"