Barking at the Moon
Oct 2 2025
The dog barks.
Like a frightened man
who talks trash,
puffs out his chest,
and brags transparently
she hides her fear in bravado.
Those yappy lap-dogs,
my gentle giant.
She is formidable,
armed
like a lethal killing machine,
yet meek, submissive, afraid;
a predator
who thinks she’s prey.
I feel sorry for the man
behind that transparent façade
and macho posturing;
how insecure he must feel,
how we laugh among ourselves
when his back is turned.
Yet feel love for that dog
who barks to quell her nerves;
too sensitive
for a world of threat,
too on edge
to let her vigilance rest.
Or does her canine super-sense
alert to every whisper and scent
rightly have her scared,
while the rest of us
are too busy distracting ourselves,
oblivious,
or wilfully blind?
Some even complicit
in the unseemly events.
At a frightening time
when change overwhelms,
the centre will not hold,
and the feeling of helplessness
is getting harder to bear.
When we’re all barking at the moon
as if it can hear our distress
or would care if it did.
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