by Sam Silva

Up and down all night! Sef, amidst his insomnia, his grade B movie dreams of War and that human moral quotient, broken by much more direct animal pathos, hears the new puppy whining...teething on the shards of carpet downstairs in that shameful manner that earns the derogatory "no!", the newspaper rolled in pitiful admonishment, by one too weak with love to swat the dog.

Nine seventeen a.m. A Debussy CD... Tres Images De La Mer...in its blue expressive moodiness soaking light from morning milked out of twilight. The puppy has been properly walked outside...has shivered among the thorns...has wandered away to the corner yard enough to be comfortable with his "shit", having afterwards followed Sef meekly to the porch settee, drug inside, and fed the standard high protein mix. Still teething...still aching in a mouth swollen with the teeth that arrive in the rags and refuse gnawed!

For the first time!...or at least the first time in poignant actuality...Sef has rediscovered that lost animalism from a terribly distant childhood...a stroke for stroke of nurturing and narcissism ...those warmly adept physical senses come awake as smell and touch, and a raw visual beauty, quite as tender and radiant as serious luminosity, as, for example, a painting of the Madonna might be.

Sara is asleep upstairs in a sound and profound detachment made of pure rest and dream...Sara!, Sef's wife and muse and goddess! Those previous limits of his forgone touch, and love, and desire. Now all of the animals sleep in a heap with him.... buried in couch and cushion asunder...while his quiet but sleepless mind wanders semi conscious echoes...in that lingering smoky aside of late dawn...

About Sam Silva: Columnist for Spring Lake New for approximately 10 yrs. Published a total of ten chapbooks and numerous audio tapes with five legitimate Small Press markets. Published no fewer than 150 poems in a variety of literary and other magazines including Samisdat, St. Andrew’s review, Poetry Motel, Boulliabaise, The E.C.U. Rebel, Paranasus, Sow’s Ear, Dog River Review, Thirteen Magazine, Brouhaha, Pembroke Magazine, Sandhill’s Review, Third Lung Review, Synesthesia, many many others. Nominated a total of seven times for Pushcart Award, by three seperate literary markets. Recipient of Emerging Artist Grant and Mini Grant from Arts Council of Fay./CC. Regularly featured guest on WFSS Literary program A TIME TO LISTEN. In addition to Poetry, has published numerous essays, and some short fiction, and is currently a regular contributor and political essayist to the alternative central Florida publication IMPACT.