“Dog” by Greg Pape

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Animal TimeCome back, his master calls, breathless to the dog.
The wind blows his voice away, away goes the dog.

I have tried in dreams to find you,
Conjured your touch, your scent, wandering like a lost dog.

They carried away what they could as the waters rose.
No room in the truck for the dog.

Bogalusa to Baghdad, Juarez to Jerusalem,
Who feeds the nameless dog?

God is great god is small.
Open the envelope, pet the dog.

–Greg Pape,
Animal Time (2011)
Accents Publishing

Greg Pape

Greg Pape is the author of nine books, including Border Crossings, Black Branches, Storm Pattern (University of Pittsburgh Press), Sunflower Facing the Sun, winner of the Edwin Ford Piper Prize (University of Iowa Press), and American Flamingo, winner of a Crab Orchard Open Competition Award (Southern Illinois University Press). His poems have been published widely in such magazines and literary reviews as The Atlantic, Iowa Review, The New Yorker, Northwest Review, and Poetry. He has received the Discovery/The Nation Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowships, the Pushcart Prize, the Richard Hugo Memorial Poetry Award, and his poems have been featured on NPR and read by Garrison Keillor on The Writers’ Almanac. He teaches at the University of Montana, and in the Brief-residency MFA program at Spalding University. Greg served as Poet Laureate of Montana from 2007 to 2009.

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