Poem for Tuesday and Marymoor Dog Park

Dog Park 

By Brandon Brown 

I told Alli I really wanted

to write a poem called “Dog Park.”

In bed she’s like you could make it

a New Yorker poem, where you

go to a dog park and then have some

huge epiphany. And then we

have a soft debate as to whether

a poem called “Dog Park”

needs a dog park in it or

not, or even a dog. I dunno.

But I do I know I don’t want

to get up out of bed, not now,

five milligrams of warm indica

coaxing me into its native land

of sleep, to write down Alli’s

idea for my poem “Dog Park”

and I tell her so and she says

get up, you’re a poet, and it’s

true, so I shuffle off this

warm, magnificent mattress,

firm as the back of a Golden

Retriever in the prime of life.

The blinds in the bedroom

are shut tight against the mean

lights of the Pacific East Mall

that moan all night and make

the nearby bedrooms bright.

But I get up, ugh, to write

down what might be the

beginning of a poem called

“Dog Park,” with or without a

dog park or even a dog. And

obviously you’d rather be

a cloud than a poet, Jesus.

Or the plastic tip of a vape pen

or the floating lint in the store

where they sell beds and sheets

and pillows and duvets or even

a grody hunk of sand on the

ground of a dog park, my

nightmare. But it will just

take a minute or two, and then

I can pee one last time with

impunity, double check the

door is locked, go back to bed,

wait for the next one.

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Tuesday felt like a Monday, since Monday had felt like a Sunday, so I had laundry, bathroom cleaning, weekend photo sorting, that sort of excitement. We did have gorgeous weather and temperatures above freezing, so since we're supposed to have precipitation for at least the next 10 days, we figured we should enjoy it. The eagles were in the tree right above our porch again, the hummingbirds were out, and we went to get bagels at lunchtime. 

We walked to Idylwood to see the ducks before my Voyager group at 4 -- only three of us could stay to watch on this anniversary of the first episode, but we saw "Blink of an Eye" which was really quite good and I'm surprised I didn't remember a thing about it! Then we had dinner, watched this week's Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and now we're watching the White Collar episode with Renée Elise Goldsberry. The dog park at Marymoor on Sunday: