Physics is not the dog’s strongest subject.
Again and again, she leaps toward the tree tops
where miserable squirrels make her life
a torment. And the butterflies, newly emerged,
quaking in sunlight as their wings dry,
inches from her nose, trembling before
blossoming into flight—whatever they are
it would make no sense to leap after them,
she understands, watching them disappear
with a judicious tilt of the head,
as if theology was her natural discipline.
—Campbell McGrath
Campbell McGrath’s books of poetry include Seven Notebooks, Shannon: A Poem of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, and In the Kingdom of Sea Monkeys.