

I did not know

that no one was planning

to bring me back, either.



from "Laika," by Ben Florin







As if amazed it's his,

he holds his hand up

before the mirror, hand

too big now for the boy's

body, hand he's turning

slowly front to back

to front, then closes to

a fist he just as slowly

opens like an exotic

flower to its full extent.



The boy so newly merged

with the emerging man

it's hard to say what's boy

or man but for the eyes,

the boyish rapt confusion

in the look he looks

with at his mobile features

as he draws a blunt finger

over the shadow of hair

along his upper lip.



Shadow of hair in armpit,

crotch, voice deeper

than it was, then higher,

deeper, while the eyes

astounded, furtive, are the eyes

of someone who can not

quite wake up from the dream

in which he suddenly

discovers he is naked

among a crowd of strangers



or like the eyes of Laika,

Soviet space dog,

in an old drawing

I remember, the stunned,

not yet distrusting but

no longer trusting look

from within the comical

glass bubble of the gawky

helmet tilted atop

the comical white spacesuit,



as the spaceship hurtles

out toward the stars, the earth

a star behind it, the earnest

dog eyes fixed on black

space like a door

the masters have walked through

and will return from, surely.

Surely they'll come to get me.

Surely they didn't love me

all that time for this.







Alan Shapiro







Alan Shapiros most recent book, Song and Dance, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2002.