Inevitable
This is the new one we’d been waiting for,
wagging his way into our lives
before breakfast .
Yes, it is about time we looked up
from our near-sighted perusal of the paper,
from the decaffeinated coffee,
to acknowledge him.
He surely knows as well as we do
that the toast is burnt, and the pills
we take so regularly are useless.
And he knows, he knows, he is just one more attempt
to rejuvenate meaning into our lives,
so when he sits, ignores his kibble,
waiting, staring, waiting
for us to surrender, with a shoulder’s shrug, to the impulse
to break off a piece of burnt-buttered-toast,
to feed him something that the vet we take him to
says is most definitely not good for him,
he is already, or eventually, will be, aware,
that the time will come
when he will prance nimbly, gnomishly, into this breakfast room
and our chairs will be empty.