Melissa Lamb is an English professor who lives in Nashville TN and teaches literature, composition, and critical thinking. Her passions are family, freedom, all forms of art, animals, and teaching. She has three dogs: Garbo (a miniature Pinscher), Willie (a Coon Hound mutt), and Moon Pearl (a Samoyed, of course). In Melissa’s own words this poem “expresses my awe and admiration of my dog and my guilt about forcing her into unnatural settings and climates. It is about the collective genetic memories that can never be bred out of us. Moon Pearl, you might say, is planet life.”
Samoyed Summer
By Melissa Lamb
Damning bars of the Cyclone fence,
Moon Pearl drops heavy weight
to her haunches, and sighs to dare dream.
She does not know if she will drink cold air again,
but she remembers …
racing, gliding through Siberian snow–
tufts of wild fur dancing in tribal frenzy.
She smiles to be home, quakes to be free.
She sallies to herd rampant reindeer,
bounds in pursuit of her doomed dinner.
Flying, flying, freer than wind, higher than stars,
stronger than glaciers; she is galvanized, primal.
One with the Great White Tundra.
Frosty hands of heavens
applaud her orgasmic howl,
as she is jarred awake
by a screaming leaf blower.
She jerks, as scorched eyes curse
swelter hell of southern summer.
With a snap of her neck, she swallows a mosquito.
Beautiful.