atonement of sorts

atonement of sorts

Markus Poetzsch

pressed new shirt in hand
I slouch across the lawn
to my neighbour’s house—the one
who minutes earlier had met me in the street
where we exchanged our greetings
under ash trees sprung with flowers

my mind then at ease, my hand released
its hold on Django’s collar
and opened in that moment’s slackness
a space just wayward wide enough
for coiled malignity—
and sure enough, she lunged, our three years’ pup
blind with menace or with joy
and tore his shirt above the cuff

he stumbled back but recomposed himself
as I, likewise startled, stumped for words
wrung the leash under me knuckle-tight
and there we stood for just a moment—heaving
calculating the distance now between us
disbelieving that tooth and claw and daily life can coexist
so easily, that ruptures of this sort and rendings
are probable as any gift of tenderness

mid mumbled pardons and forgiving
a patchwork veil thrown over violence
we parted, each already lost in thought
and utterly bewildered, wondering in my case
if but a minute more or less
I might have missed him altogether—
might have played fetch, rejoiced in the weather
and headed blithely whistling home

instead of this inglorious reminder—
vestige of that first soured sweetness on the tongue—
that we in all our reasoned calm civility
are still tethered to a beast
are broken still and always breaking
what he so lovingly redeemed.

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Markus Poetzsch
Educator & Poet 

Markus’s work has appeared in the Dalhousie Review and Clayjar Review. He is Associate Professor of English at Wilfrid Laurier University (in Canada) and teaches Romantic literature with a particular interest in the Wordsworths and John Clare.

Photography by Road Ahead