Angry Village Anthology--"Doggone"

[The twenty-fourth installment of the month-long poetry sequence that began on October 1st.]

"Doggone"

Bob Mendenhall

Whether in self-defense or some beastly sense of territoriality
The monster snapped the neck of Virgil's German shepherd Kendra
Way back when on the fourteenth of this October.
For two weeks straight the dog'd been bent all out of shape,
Barking seemingly non-stop throughout the night.
Virgil and me had been neighbors for nearly twenty years,
But he wouldn't listen to me when I kept trying to tell him
He'd best bring the dog inside when it got dark out.
"She watches o'er," he insisted, and look what happened:
One permanently silenced canine.
Now we're herding the perpetrator toward the town square;
I happily jab it in the back with the steel fingers of my hoe.
Had the damned thing snuffed out the mutt a day sooner
It would've saved me the cost of strip streak and strychnine.