Umbrella
A Journal of Poetry and Kindred Prose


Timothy Murphy

is the author of the poetry collections The Deed of Gift, Story Line Press, 1998 and Very Far North, Waywiser Press, 2002, and the translator, with Alan Sullivan, of Beowulf, a 2004 title in Longman’s Cultural Editions series.

He graduated from Yale in 1972 as Scholar of the House in Poetry and has worked as a venture capitalist and pig farmer in North Dakota, his home state.


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The Lady and the Greyhound For Charlee Wilbur

Marshaled, tethered and starved out of its mind,
her last greyhound came from a racing track
where whips raised weals on every bony back
of blinkered hounds, that bursting from a blind
gate at a gunshot, chased to the attack.

Over time the dog became a friend
and yielded to her tender discipline,
an ear scratch or a hand beneath the chin,
but he was spooked by shadows to the end.
What was could not erase what might have been.



 
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