dogwood blooms w/ dogs

i was the down boy & stay stay stay
in the sickly sweet april 
of your first hikes.
the mountain didn't know 
what to do with all the faces. 
tossing them from its branches 
like tissues or travelers.
picking dogs for you
from the green. giving away
you phone number to breeders.
everything is fucking
or at least yellow. crocuses 
with their throats full
of the young boy i could have been.
a boy & his dog a dog & his boy.
us, running on the railroad tracks
until they turn into ladders.
dreams of coal that once
pulled fire from the earth.
i am rescuing the dogs or else
they are not dogs at all but
flowers who learned to run.
rearing its ugly head,
a knot forms in the tree's factory.
how i stuffed my pockets.
smelled my fingers for pink.
found a few unopened buds
which remembered me of fawn.
worried if i held them too long
they'd burst free with all 
those hooves. but instead
we have dogs enough to survive.
dogs for sleeping & dogs
for confessions. i laugh 
like only a meadow really should.
let the tree deliver 
dog after dog. forgetting all memory
of blossoms. how an old lover once say
he could see a whole dogwood tree
at the back of my throat.
tails wagging & all. it is better left
between me & the animals 
of which i am certaintly one.
i hope to grow alive like this
in the next life. swelling sensation
& then the wet april-mouthed world
stirring me until i have legs.