Nine AM

.
The big male dog
who shares the house
along with two female graduate students,
a female professorial city planner and me,
is an energetic person. He licks his
plastic bone, decides he likes it, snuffles his wet tongue,
spreads himself on the carpet,
ignores the four
male cats who glide around him.
Then he rises lumpily and
gladly, cloppers to his
dish of meat kibbles.
I can hear his tongue
and the crunch of his large teeth.