Idea of Odor on a Wet Dog

The boy raised by wolves in the dark
cave is not an example of a boy
whose lament is a mercy
or a gut-wrenching cry of some soul
hungering under a streetlight.

The idea is more like another
way of turning caterwauling into small
crumbs of a childhood. The wolf boy
nestles inside jaws that lift him
past the rainy sidewalk. Maybe he believes

this is how a dog must think, in odors
without listening for anything
more than the green aroma
inside a puddle of water.

It’ll be months before the social worker
stumbles upon this lair to save—
she’ll pronounce it distinctly—
                                  “the boy’s lost humanity”—

which she’ll write into her report
has been all-but licked away;
human knees rubbed tender as a secret,
his wolf heart vexed in a cave
with no draperies, no refrigerator,
no door to bolt out thieves.






Click here to listen to Robert Haynes reading "Idea of Odor on a Wet Dog"






Robert Haynes lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he teaches at Arizona State University and online at Writers on the Net. Some of his poetry has appeared in Bellingham Review, New Letters, Nimrod, Rattle, Poetry Northwest, Lake Effect, Louisville Review, Louisiana Literature, Oyez Review, and elsewhere. A book of poems, The Grand Unified Theory, was published in 2001.