Bill Gottlieb
Orpheus the Dog
We walk up the road next to the vast state park, where the redwoods labyrinth. Bigfoot lives in there, said the realtor who sold us our house, pointing his forefinger like a prophet. A mythic road of hungry undergrowth. We is me and she, our recent rescue, a white chihuahua, eyes wide as life. Today, she stops again and looks back, wondering where you are, whether you’ve been left behind. She doesn’t know that Hell has made a deal. She doesn’t know that the infernal are faithful, always right there alongside the shepherding shadows. She is weak with love, impatient and doubtful, godded by her organed body, her yearning brain, her ten breasts. Her children were taken by a larger stranger. Where are they? Where are you? Where are we, bathed in ancient shade, decked in the dark cloak of today?
well-
loved
good
boy
kill
shake of
a plush
toy
About the Author
Bill Gottlieb’s haibun and haiku were most recently anthologized in contemporary haibun online 20 and Haiku 21.2. He is the author of 18 non-fiction books on health and healing that have sold widely and been translated into 12 languages. He lives amidst the redwoods with the non-repressible JHK and the irrepressible Nyx, Joe-Joe Harris, She-She, and Happy Jax Milo Max.