After the Beagle Poem

My wife doesn't like Bukowski,
maybe for being a cynic
maybe for his words about women,
about his women, for the words,
for the anatomy of his dirty old mind.

But today I read her a poem about a beagle,
a poem by Chinaski himself,
and she swooned and she purred,
and I believe her heart even skipped a beat.

"Our beagle snuffles in his sleep," the old man writes,
and now my wife forgives him
of everything, acquits him of all charges,
every sin erased. She no longer
frowns when I come from the shower,
minutes before having recited "The Shower Poem"
or "Bluebird" while I washed the dirt away.

"Our beagle spreads a paw," he says,
and her shoulders drop
from the heavy weight of love
for a beagle she's never seen.

"Do not bother the beagle lying there,"
and do not bother a woman newly in love
as she sits, not sleeping
but relaxed into thoughts about pets,
particularly a dreaming beagle
who once must have slept
under the eye of a dirty old man.