Telepathy

                                       For Pam

                                                  (Sister Mary Agnes)

                                       now metal money too seldom clatters
                                       on marble       counters of café’s and bars
                                       where cash registers don’t chime but slide
                                       a draw out for those paying hard money   
                                    
                                       now solitary silence in a cell’s
                                       customary for nuns and digital 
                                       literati broken by birdsong   owls 
                                       hooting at night   dogs nosing attention


                                       you can marvel anyone ever sought 
                                       quiet concentration without headphones
                                       in a populous city with no private space
                                       when papyrus was paper and scratch was slate

Dogs tune out

digital commerce, texting, just plain spying

all that noise

dogs have it

a reality of smell

they also read your minds

so that all your thought

they know

 Argos knew

Odysseus 

        would come home

would a dog

sense Pam's ghost

turning towards me?

though so far away

  Copyright © Dick Russell
                2016, 2018