My sweet dog’s voice wanders in the heat
then returns with lolling laughing tongue,
joyful eye, fan of tail
telling me of the dogs he met and chatted with
cross-legged, in the moonlight,
repeating their stories over and over.
You know how silly little dogs are.
They love us, they run until they catch us,
they always forgive our simple ears...
how we cannot hear the birth-cry of an egg
or the sun breaking through clouds.
They pay us the attention we need,
with eyes more pure than ours.
Overflowing with laughter and love
they follow us into the years that terrify,
the days of peace.
founded the Border Voices Poetry Project in 1993, while also employed as assistant
news editor at The San Diego Union-Tribune. He sends poets into schools
throughout San Diego, hosts TV shows with internationally acclaimed poets and
students, has published 22 anthologies of poems, and moderates a poetry fair
every year.
Webb won awards as an investigative reporter for stories on the Hell’s Angels
and California prison gangs. He owns three pampered dogs (“they’re
spoiled rotten,” says the vet).