[Rick Mullin]

Thanks Julie,

No agenda, really, but some tension intended between constraint and freedom, disability and mobility, mud-froze ball and blue sky sun, victory and ultimate defeat followed by broader victory (?). That last line in stanza 1 is intended to bring a smile, but it has a little job to do as well. Dog and owner are both inside the fence where the action takes place. I'm going for a cinematic effect in the last line. Or trying to resolve such an effect through the poem.

It is, on the one hand, a sort of diary entry and easy reading. On the other hand, ... or am I reading too much into it? ~,:^)



Hi Susan,

Thanks. Raptor works better for several reasons here, first and most banal: it was a pair of yellow tail hawks gliding in circles in the sun that I watched while Bailey gnawed his new softball. Also, we see a lot of hawks in the sky in Essex County, NJ, part of the mega suburbs of New York. I once saw a pair of bald eagles! Never saw vultures. Also, if I'm not mistaken, vultures are cowardly douche bags that wait until you're dead before they start in on you. Raptors, on the other hand, swoop down and carry small pets into the blue. Lastly, I don't mean for the birds to pose a direct threat. Bailey is 90 pounds, and I'm a little heavier. But I like that they bring a grim reaper element to the offing. Seeing them was the prompt for the poem (there is "first thought, best thought", but there is also "first line, last line", which I actually believe). And I like using the word "raptor". "hawk" would bring the kind of specificity that would blow the effect I'm going for at the close. "vulture" would be hitting it way too hard.

So, maybe I'm definitely reading too much into it~! I'm bored, I guess. No inner resources.

Thanks again Julie and Susan,
RM