Mythville

Shyla is Blue Love Now

for Shyla the Sheriff, 1998-2011

You will find her

beneath the stairs

staring at your feet,

but seeing your head,

all white-masked and wolfie

Ordering in, ordering out:

You'll find her naked,

running mildly about,

rocking chair and bouncy

When the pizza man

Arrives at our doors

You'll find her lighter,

mightier, than the most devout,

far better than fighters and dividers

in Las Vegan, New Mexico,

Keeping me company

When you, my love,

Have gone insane and winds,

Solar in nature, terminating

The phones with crackle

And invisible light,

Make it impossible to speak

They find her in Las Vegas,

at two a.m. times two,

turning toward the TV,

With ears for radar absorbing

The stirring sounds of the Earth

And growing sicker, each day,

For debates about the deadbeat,

For laughter on the sell-out shows,

Her old lady fur coming out in tufts,

Ready for the door to open,

Mouthing the words, “out, out, out.”

You find her brilliant, lit,

deviate with experimental DNA

and sane, still as death: listening

for the Jefferson Airplane

To land on ice,

for the sound of scraping,

for the blue-shift echo

of the first sounds of defeat,

for the skeletal sleds

Off-shore, behind

Snow-dabbed trees

in British Columbia

You'll find her in forty eight

states of being on forty eight

motel room keys, thumbing dumb,

The door monkey: O, if she can

Only solve that one riddle,

The door nob, then she

Won’t need you … we, us;

Because she only needs

The scent of roses,

The yellow pedals, in a slow,

Elegant walk, a well-timed

Roll in the grass,

The one thing you can depend

On, like the rising Sun, the spring,

The Malamute shepherd wolf-bred

version of the moonlit Angel of Mons.