Placeholders

 

Placeholders

 

 

When I called him, he approached with caution –

a burnt ochre offering with a rug on,

stuck on back-stick twitching like a metronome.

Keeping bad time, I must state,

no musician could make much of his six eight

less a rolling meter, more a shaggy dog’s tale.

I wouldn’t say he had a cocky eye,

pushed a grizzled muzzle between my thighs

but if he could talk, he might sigh -

been instructed to worry a given pronoun

like a long dead buried bone

that calls every hole in the ground a home -

and told not to take it lying down

while upon his brow – that ancient frown

which, as you might think, determines nothing

at this time. You ask yourself – do they do that?

Dig them out of the mud, drop them clagged

in dirt on the ground - hearts singing and glad

to be tugged by necks around UK towns - drags

in lieu of a proper walk or the thrill of the hunt

by sour faced or ancient one-sticked grunts.

He’s had his fill, leashed outside vape shops,

Waterstone’s, Boots the Chemist, the Co-Op -

scruffy, scrawny, big, small, box-blunt chopped

or hop-bellied - so big they’ve dropped

beneath legs that struggle to hold them up –

and listens impatiently to second hand gossip

while something that passes for an owner

looked at life and took him for a placeholder.