The dog out the back, Zaa, keeps howling. He's just lost his mate (ie buddy), an older dog called Ashka, who had to be put down (I'd been watching her for years from our back window and felt close to her - what, through all that glass and distance? yes, I guess so). He's a younger dog, who would naturally have been top dog (he being he) though he never was, as it turned out, and now he only dog.

Warm, lazy and slow today. I have to get to a book launch (a big double one) but my sickness keeps me fuzzy and strange.


Had I been faceless
I would not have felt
the colder rain

flocks seek me like air

if I had risen once
ongoing after
the quiet


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