JENNY KNOWLEDGE (POEM)

12/9/01

In the cabin, my dog hovers close

after dinner of beef loin cooked in foil

in the wood stove, yuppie salad, polenta

fried in butter, kalamata olives,

Mouton Cadet Bordeaux, 1997. She wants

scraps and pets. Now

she snaps her head toward winter’s draft

seeping around the door, fidgets her nose,

barks. I scratch her butt, say, “You

know things I don’t know.” She woofs

again. “And I know things you don’t know.”

I am jolted by my own words. Then: “Jenny,”

 “I’m glad you don’t know what I know.”

She goes to her bed by the stove, does her

downward spiral doggy dance, tumbles into

sleep. My words end; thoughts ramble on:

I’m glad you have not heard the shriek

of Gloria, whose infant daughter has just now

been given up for lost by us, who searched the river

and woods through afternoon and night. I’m glad

you don’t know the sharp snap

of an AK-47 round breaking the sound barrier

as it passes your ear. I’m glad you don’t know

the smell of burning  napalm. I’m glad you have not understood,

have not tried or needed to understand, the meaning

of the television image of a passenger jet

flying into a skyscraper.

I kneel by her bed, spread my hand on

her breathing side, trying to absorb

her innocence.                                                                        Dean Metcalf