Cardinal Points

Pavlov’s Dog

.:. Pavlov's Dog Last night, late, a light rain beading the windshield, I held you and we listened to the static and old songs on the radio. Filled with the past, the failure of love to last, beyond our breath on the glass I saw coming down the wet street a great dog, his chestnut coat long and curling, soaked as though he'd walked all night to stand there before us. I held you close and watched him shut his yellow eyes and shake slowly his massive head, water slinging from his muzzle in threads of light. I watched him drive the muscles of his neck and shoulders, his back, flanks, hips a blur of motion and water flowering. And so I believed love and sorrow must be foreign to each other, the heart so large they never meet, never speak. Why is it not so? Why the old song, desire and heartbreak we can sing word for word after all these years? Why as I held you did that dog 6 appear and seem to shake clean, only to roll his eyes open and stand unmoving, staring our way through the rain'? Cold and steady and long into the night it fell, into his thick coat, into my heart where you walk, filled with love and unafraid. I am afraid. Of Pavlov, of his bell and saliva at work in my life. Tell me how I am to join you, to shake free for good of that cold man's rain, his dog standing wet, obedient, and brutal as a bell ringing, always ringing, for sorrow. 7 ...