Penned

Christine Vaufrey, "Stained Glass Dog - Brou Church,"
photo 2007

Barking dog in a fenced yard, yelling “HEY! Hey
hey hey hey HEY!” three times, four times, with
no breakdown, neither in bark nor fence. Didn’t
Joshua use trumpets to crumble Jericho’s walls?
Poor dog—a trumpet is what it hasn’t got. All it
has is boredom, and loneliness, and a persistent
hope that the next bark will be call-and-response
hollered back, or will tumble the lock on the gate
until it opens, or even possibly conjure a squirrel
down from a neighboring tree. The next bark will
surely do it—until it forgets to bark, puts its nose
into the wind, listens to the approaching thunder.