DOG PEOPLE


It is evening here in Afghanistan
Sunlight slides over earthen HESCOES
Slants across the tent flap
Muttering in the wind like rain
Absent for the last 70 days.
Olive drab becomes aqua marine.
An old dog, its fur like the floor mat
Of my old Pinto clinging to ribs
Like it has no place left to go
Roots for any last vestiges
It can find in a number ten can
The mess Sergeant has left for it.
As he sits, smokes, and sweats in his shirt;
The rings of perspiration expanding
Like ripples in a pond, he wonders
With four body bags on the tarmac
Awaiting their final flight home,
Who would mourn the death of a dog?
Still, he throws it scraps of steak it snaps up,
Tuffs of fur fly in the wind, mange.
Surgeon says this particular type
Can transfer to humans.
We have orders to shoot them.
The only time the Marines and RRD boys
Will voluntarily get together
As the sun rolls over the Hindu Kush
Ranging old dogs in Leopold scopes
Since they can no longer shoot Afghani goats.
They sit cross legged with cans of coke
Sweating beside them on the HESCOES
Killing what they probably played with as kids.
They laugh as one is spun around and yelps.
The carcasses seem to go flat in the heat
Jerkied on the shoulder of the runway
Fur fluttering like a memory of rain
Taunting like the Marines,
"One shot, one kill Motherfucker!"s.