Before taking a trip

The black dogs have lost my scent; I hear one of them’s become a guide dog for the blind man down the street. I’ve started dreaming at night. In the story (the only one he ever wrote) the idealist worked in the mortuary, prettifying corpses with chemicals: a slave to fatality and all the rest of it. He worked with nervous attention to detail and in the evenings sank into torpor. But this is real life, these winds are blowing the dust off my desk. I’ll run through any season’s weather.