There are skunks, and a flask of warm gin, and a barrel of laughs
in the ravine where Sam’s kept far away from the unlighted house,
kept attached by a collar to a chain that links up to a cable
that runs overhead between trees stood a good way apart.
He runs back-and-forth, forth-and back, back-and-forth when he’s able.
He barks at the skunks, drinks the gin, and he looks in the barrel
for the joke why he’s here, in the fading hope this time he’ll get it.