Dog Walking at Night in a New Neighborhood

by Elisa Pulido

I open the door, only to discover this place, too, gets dark at night.
And, as I have not yet made the acquaintance of the street’s bushes,
and since they balloon blackly either side of the road like rumors,
I walk Max down the center of the street.  Across town, church bells peal

from the cathedral of San Juan, and just as I decide to brave the sidewalk
through the valley of shadows, a fire truck, siren-less, but with lights flashing,
rolls up the street, which can only mean that judgment has come to one
of my new neighbors.  I walk the other way, through an unseasonable scent

of phlox, which rises from an invisible bed and think about the bodies
of saints, which supposedly smell like roses even in death.  I imagine
these particular neighbors with their unseasonably fragrant phlox must be
saintly people, and just as I determine to make their acquaintance, I’m warned

by the runoff of night watering as it slips through a drain in the curb
and showers underground. Undoubtedly, this neighborhood, too,
has its underbelly.  Down the street a blue fairy skitters towards us.
At close range she morphs into a battery-operated light dangling

from the collar of a large boxer, who snarls and strains at his leash
in an effort to confront Max.  A hooded figure pulls him past.  I walk on,
still pondering this latest lesson, when the world’s stateliest street lamp-
a fluted column topped with a translucent urn-allows us into its circle.

I pause and gaze upward, into its benediction, then turn towards home.
Above me, the moon has been bitten off by thirds, the last third still clinging
to the night.  What can it mean that tonight of all nights, I should experience
a two-thirds loss in the moon?  I have no answer.  At the front door,

while fumbling with unfamiliar keys, I notice the Schonfeld’s have left
their mezuzah nailed to the frame.  So this was a house in Israel.
Me, too, Lord, watch me, too.  When I sit at home, when I walk
along the way, when I lie down and when I rise up.

*Photo courtesy lippert61.