POSTCARDS FROM THE ROAD

I started out as if I knew where I was going,
but sorry to leave you at home all alone.
Everyone is grouchy here and went to bed early
and then the dog squealed and howled all night
and had a lonesome-attack at five in the dark.
The morning sun is beautiful and terrible
and brings the world’s worst news on wires.
Everyone is grouchy here and got up early
to read the world’s worst news on wires.
The sun will come up beautiful and terrible
so the dog must squeal and howl for the dark.
Sorry to leave you there at home all alone
where I started like I knew where I was going,
I have lonesome-attacks like a homeless dog.

Taylor Graham

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada, and also helps her husband (a retired wildlife biologist) with his field projects. Her poems have appeared in America, The Iowa Review, The New York Quarterly, Poetry International, Southern Humanities Review, and elsewhere, and she’s included in the anthology California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her latest book, The Downstairs Dance Floor (Texas Review Press, 2006), is winner of the Robert Phillips Poetry Chapbook Prize.

Email: Taylor Graham

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