When did world and weather shift,
that we walk friends about in fur?
On scrabbled coast where Jeffers pined
and Mission clay soaked native blood,
I am on Easter Sunday in the back pew of
Wayfarers’ church, simpled green and white.
Hear Father Norm bless all, as my blonde
dog stretches under hymnals and the plate,
with eyes forgiving human egoists
who say God needs no pets in heaven.
Norm sermons that life-firsters of today
would eagerly pluck Jesus off the cross
and fix him to a feeding tube, so he’d never
have died to wash our sins. At my ankles
dog eyes stay level wide, pooled in deeper
focal point than mine. It juts me: those
unfallen need not bark to be redeemed.
.

Carmel, California