Dog on the Median

Dog on the Median of the Kennedy Expressway, Chicago

Listen to this poem, as set to music by composer Jasper Wald Sussman and premiered by Madison Chamber Choir in May 2017. 

I keep coming back
to that dog
running west
next to the fast lane
along the concrete meridian
between eight
lanes of traffic
 
and wishing
I could have stopped
although it was impossible
four lanes of us
nose to tail
seventy miles an hour
 
that dog, thin, grey,
loping doggedly along
no Samaritan in sight
nowhere to go but on