Barking All Night Poem by Diane Lee Moomey

They'll bark
the stranger bark, those hounds—
nip the heels, send trespassersflying;

or yip the yip of a trodden tail,
or the welcome:
where the woof have you been all day! ?
They'll bark all those, they will, we will,
and wag as well.

But then, oh yes then,
one day comes the long bark, all night long
the long bark: the baying,
deep breaths between, savoring
the rumble in the throat, the chest.

The long bark, lord save us all
from barking the long bark, from giving voice across
the winter-bare fields, in vacant rooms, all night

barking all night because
the road is empty
and there's nothing else to do.