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Daily(ish) poem → 00315 ◊ Call & Response ◊ Penelope Pelizzon
Call & Response
A nervous dog will snap at wind
that snarls outdoors as snows descend
till only walking pacifies
the wolf awoken in the hound.
We trudge the path we’ve memorized,
our coats first nipped, then gnashed at by
fangs within the sharpened cold,
grown sharper as the daylight dies.
Ice rusts the hinges of the oaks.
Like owls, they screech at us below
& we, forgetting what we are,
flinch beneath that killing blow.
But soon we’re swallowed in the roar
streams of rush-hour traffic pour.
Pink neon from the Eastbrook Mall
(our northern lights) erases stars
we know still seethe, invisible,
each night we feel their anxious pull
deep inside the animal
asleep inside each animal.
—Penelope Pelizzon
—found in Zócalo Public Square (September 30, 2016)