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# The Savage Harvest
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/of-dogs-and-men/
- Published: 2014-11-18T14:58:39.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-15T05:03:14.000Z
- Description: Dogs know how to live and die with grace. I don't. In my hands are wet grapes fit to burst and beyond my reach...
- Author: Andy
- Tags: poetry, #Migrated-1784090317409, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-15 04:39

Dogs know how to live and die with grace.  
I don't.  
In my hands are wet grapes fit to burst  
and beyond my reach  
a glass of wine  
I'll never swallow,  
like a sticky creek  
that catches in the earth's muddy maw.

When nighttime chews up  
dusk with starry teeth  
I become ravenous,  
I stalk my domesticity  
with savage ennui,  
like a hawk that can neither  
fly nor chew with its mouth closed.

I love this wolf asleep in my lap,  
his fur as soft as fresh lawn clippings,  
his gentle flicked-tongue kisses  
and his incessant wagging tail.  
Does he recall or resent  
what time and man  
have changed in him? Do I?  
Of what stuff am I made—  
carpet or coal?  
Wind or windmill?

We dig trenches for war,  
trenches for bones.  
We sometimes obey ourselves,  
sometimes obey others.  
Our quiet yard looks  
out upon train tracks,  
and beyond them woods  
and roads and trails and forests  
and hikers and hawks.

I press my ear upon the seashell  
of the universe  
and hear the hiss-howl  
of raw iron tamed into the scythe,  
and wonder how to harvest myself  
before the season changes  
and wild weeds  
flourish in the plowed grave  
where great men and women  
die cacophonous deaths.

*Written on Sunday, March 18, 2018*