Dog Love, By BRENDAN GALVIN

Now the shadow of the wolf in him

wakes early. Before even a hairline of light

he paces the house, whining the sting

of each love dart till I wake

and begin weighing him with human analogies.

I know this wallowing in the soup of self,

that alphabet spelling me, me,

my insides flapping like a lovestruck leaf,

all sense loping off in the heels

of every urge. When I unlock the dark

he goes straight for the woodpile

where the little bitch has set up

housekeeping. And he has unlocked

something I thought dead, the puritan

only sleeping in me: I could keep him

from kibble and scraps just to test

which hunger is stronger.

In the light rain before coffee

I whistle him back, but only part way,

relearning “hangdog” by the wet drape

of his ears. When he looks with concern

to the stacked wood, I hear the tearing

of our treaty, and meditate on guilt

and conditioning when he gives me a profile

but won’t look me in the eye.

Will he seem older when she runs him off

snapping at his tendons, who has lured him

with love nips about his face?

She is not the one I would have chosen

for him, and at first, given her size,

I doubted the feasibility of it all.

But now I wonder if it’s hot water

or cold you douse them with

before the schoolbus comes.

From “Great Blue: New and Selected Poems” (University of Illinois Press: $24.95, cloth; $15.95, paper; 162 pp.). Galvin, who lives and works in New England, is co-editor, with novelist George Garrett, of Poultry: A Magazine of Voice. He is founder and director of the Connecticut Writers Conference and winner of a number of leading fellowships. “Great Blue” is the first winner of the Folger Library’s new O. B. Hardison Jr. award. 1991 by Brendan Galvin. Reprinted by permission of the author.