Awakening I hear the cuckoo clock cuckoo once.
The football game is long over. I wonder if the team
of Giant men was able to beat the 49ers. Dunce
that I am, I fell fast asleep before its end, it would seem.

Both of my dogs are standing there looking at me as if to say
it is well past time for our nighttime walk and we need to pee.
At the door at eye level I am greeted with the surprising display
of a small green tree frog’s beige belly and knobby toes that he

suckers himself to the glass with. Outside the night is very hot,
even sultry like every good Louisiana summer night should be,
and eerily still as though the molecules of air are stationary, not
bumping about as normal. The neighborhood is empty. I can see

nothing moving other than the dogs and me. But I become aware
of a din of cricket conversations and the tree frogs all calling
“Your place or mine?”… Strangely loud is this evening…I stare
at the starless night sky and wonder if the universe is ending,

or if only gray clouds are obscuring the stars still up there.
As we plod along, the dogs and I, I pick up a small fallen branch
from under the maple tree and gently hit the side of my bare
leg as we walk. A crazed dove, startled from its roost by chance,

hurls itself into flight with great commotion directly overhead scaring
the hits out of me! Doves are such stupid birds, quite pretty but
dumb….not unlike some blondes…. As we walk, now I am thinking
that I should write a poem about a handsome sheik in Arabia what

has adventures and I mustn’t use “burning sands” since that’s cliché.
Next I wonder if I am really awake at all or if this is only a dream,
with me inside asleep on the sofa still. No, I’m awake. One sure way
to tell is, if dreaming, by now an elephant or a naked lady I’d have seen.

Our walk completed in a boring, uneventful fashion, it is time for bed.
I seem to have completed this storoem with nothing of importance said.