Mustard

I’m tired tonight.
The wrists and mind are weak
and there’s so much to do.
I think of all the dirty windows of the world,
the lost keys to locked doors,
and I drift toward the longing of
a slightly burnt hot dog with mustard
like a single engine plane on empty
looking for a sure place to land.
My dog Alfie and I are still alive
and I know this is a miracle.
He’s twenty-one years old.
That’s a hundred and forty seven
In human years.
But sometimes, when he’s chasing a grasshopper,
he forgets that and his arthritis vanishes.
It is good to desire what you don’t have,
even lilacs come back again and again.
Suddenly he’s four and a half,
following something inside
the dark cave of his mind,
glittering and sparkling.