I Don’T Sing The Blues!

Not even when the rain falls in sheets
and the bugs are biting in the woods

True, it can be a bitch on a day in July
hiking with the old labrador

along the trail that meanders
down to the north branch

Some days the old labrador
tells me how her legs ache
and how she longs

to bathe in the cool water
of the north branch
like a gaelic princess

So we walk through woods
like man and dog with string-tied
packages in our brains

Wandering in a worm-shaped
country north by northwest
far from Limbo