An Ongoing Crime

A small and shrinking pond
Makes a big noise when wind
Slaps its waves on growing

Shores. No one up here writes
Books or reads books or likes
Books or ever liked books.

They are to be envied,
Not disparaged and scorned.
When they commit their crimes,

As all lives commit crimes,
They’ll never be haunted
By how writers describe

The small lives of their kind.
It’s a pity they can
Read at all, a pity

About God, who will haunt
Most of them if not all.
One gives his dog a smack

For being too eager
To snatch the tennis ball
That he then throws as far

As he can in the waves.
The dog leaps in, churning.
The dog can’t read at all.