Poetry
Summer
2012

How to Start Your Poem

Let your dog run
see where it goes

what it turns up
what it brings back

a hollow yellow ball
a blue baby shoe

a rabbit-skin glove
the thumb torn off

a shimmering star-
ling fluttering in

its mouth
a broken wing

its eyes spark-
ling beads of ebony

its burnished beak
locked open

a tongue inside.