after a line from Haruki Murakami
On my morning paper route, I passed it every day,
the house with only the sound of a dog barking inside
out on the edge of our village—its curtains never parted,
its small porch always empty, nothing in the front yard
but yellow grass. From the tenor of its barking, the dog
was medium-sized, probably a mongrel, not really in distress,
but lonely, mildly afraid, needful of someone to hear him
and to somehow respond. . . . One summer, more or less
feeling sorry for the dog, I mock-barked back while I pedaled
my bicycle into, then out of its earshot. Yet since the house
wasn’t a customer on my route, I never gave any more
than that minute or two of attention as I tossed
my papers onto adjacent porches and I never once
saw whoever fed and kept the dog inside that house.