WANT
The world is awash in unwanted dogs;
like-alike yellow curly-haired mongrels that come
collared and wormed, neutered and named, through customs
come immunized, racketing and rabies-tagged
to Midwestern farms from Save the Children, the Peace Corps
come from Oxfam into the carpeted bedrooms of embassies
into the Brooklyn lofts of CARE workers on leave
into the London, Paris, Geneva homes of Doctors Without Borders
and still the streets of Asmara, Kigali, Bombay
refill with ur-dogs: those bred-back scavenging flea-ridden
sprung-ribbed bitches whose empty teats make known
the latest bitten-off litter of curs that go back to the Pleistocene.
And what of the big-headed stick-figured children naked
in the doorways of Goma, Luanda, Juba, Les Hants
or crouched in the dust of the haphazard donkey-width tracks
that connect the named and the nameless hamlets of Want?
There will always be those who speed past unbeguiled.
There will always be somewhere a quorum of holy fools
who wade into the roiling sea despite the tsunami
to dip teaspoon after teaspoon from the ocean.
Maxine Kumin
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