Dog Walking
How many times have you seen one or more dogs prancing through a stubbled cornfield or trotting along the side of the road, or even standing in the road? It’s common to see dogs at the ends of their homestead driveways, barking as if they would explode with the whole-body energy they command. We expect that of dogs with their guardian instinct for their packs. Why is the dog walking? Maybe the male dog is looking for love. The female might be putting herself out there as a love target. Yet, the dog(s) passing through open terrain or lying out in the rain contemplatively considering – well, can we know what they are pondering? Probably not, but we can wonder, speculate, even have compassion. Why has he left home, if only temporarily? Is he escaping cruelty or lack of care? Maybe she’s just bored and needs some entertainment. Why do dogs walk away from home at all?
Every dog is drawn to wildness. Is that what drives their walking?
Dog Walking
Deep North
November gusts Snow dust-swirls
salting pepper-back fur
Black nose twitches combing flakes and rills
Paws lift a rhythm of straight ahead
pathing shallow paw-fall patterns
Creviced icepacks splay toes claw-ended
each arrow sharpness the wolves’
benediction
Dog walking
Cold-weary sun hangs a pendulum
on a tenuous trembling edge
a great frost-closed circle dissects the snowdust and ties
his white-beaded muzzle that reads the signs
From crystalled snout to strayed green eyes’ white lashes
over yellow grasses bent unbroken in unbound spaces
of churning snow and drifted places
surrounding feral howls ghosting through the flakes
Needle pointing in a bowl of water . . .
Something’s out there
Head hangs between pumping shoulders
The day gone down with the rising
of the great matter’s question
pivot-turning words cracked
open to constant hunger
Nothing for his sunken belly these past three days
but a crippled rabbit supper
black and white survival
Dog Walking
a homestead house greying, broken
spoiled and stubbled fields surrounding
rutted, rural, two-sided ditch road
crossing over cow-pasture’s frozen stream
He trundles down to drink but finds stopped-motion current
ice on ice – full of stopped-flow weedy still-life
Even scudding clouds with no water dropping
He buries his face into grainy snow
Near enough, a farmyard’s high-poled light
like most, illuminated day and night
A farm dog barks announcing its eternal station
The traveler’s shrill-piqued ears stand alert
The guard lopes to the gate of nothingness
showing clear that it is stateless, without nation
guarding those who know not they are protected
the dog a fixture, nothing more, nor less
The snow-salt-back dog emits a listless growl
expressed from frost-filled, thirsty throat
The guardian farm dog approaches, tail-flags a warning
The ronin-dog, unimpressed, gazes distant
A way beyond the sentry’s gate, a small, dark house
a shed a broken truck
under farmyard’s circle of yellow light
a windchime tringles from the porch
a pale glow through gauzy greying curtains
Darker dog avoids an altercation
with the cur who has no nation
lopes away keeping boundary
between himself, distraction, and destruction
Somewhere close, yowls and yips
He lifts his head and sniffs the air
Somewhere close, they are there
Sand-and-snow-coated coyote cousins leap circling
to an uncertain map inside their heads that draws a taut line
to a brown-ferned, November Forest a short way off
Ears and noses stiffen – heads snap back and
asudden they explode and streak for dinner
great question marks bouncing on their tails
Just before the Westward’s blood-black rolling
Dog ever straight-on walking
Black Dog running
Just before pines complete their shadows round the unturned paths
Lost dog stopping
Unsheltered, salted back glitters under darkening sky
Dog
disappearing
into the great question why
Background
If you know me personally, and/or if you follow my posts, you know that dogs are integral to my life and even my happiness. I have had over a dozen canine buddies over the decades, including the two current friends who reside in our cabin and in our hearts. So there’s that.
Then there’s every time I see one or more dogs walking and sniffing, loping with purpose, or barking at cars like they owned the countryside. Where are these dogs going? What do they think they are doing? To whom do they belong? I always wonder. So, I wrote this poem to explore this dogged mystery, at least partially.
Exploration 1: Why is the dog walking?
Exploration 2: What is the dog’s destination?
Exploration 3: Do we walk similarly? Do we have a destination?
Fantastic thought provoking poetry! I followed right along and could envision everything so perfectly! Nice work! Typical of your perception.
ReplyDeleteI remember when our black Lab/Chesapeake cross female, 'Cubby' used to alert us about anything the least bit threatening she could see or smell. This was often coyotes or bears, the latter of which is not of this telling. Coyotes provided some great entertainment for her (and us too until I declared war on them a couple years ago) when she'd let out a whooping bark and alert us to quickly look across the creek, where we would often see the gray apparition we would've likely over-looked otherwise.
One time a large, coyote across the creek, paused to listen to Cubby bark opposite him/her near the house. Emboldened by the coyote's stillness, she bounded down to the water's edge, her tail and hackles up, roaring. The coyote decided to call her bluff and started down to meet her (and I started off to the basement door to call its) She wanted no part of that confrontation and high-tailed it back to the safe corner of the house. The coyote stopped at the edge of the creek --and sat down. I remained in the basement with the door shut, probably filming them.
The moment the coyote tired of the sit-in, it turned and started back up the creek basin -- and Cubby wildly charged down to the creek edge, her tail whipping behind her like a big ballbat, when the coyote whirled 180-degrees in a heartbeat and charged her. I think she shit right there. Her back legs clawed for traction in reverse; she thrust her front legs like twin steel pistons away from the water's edge, her head, neck and shoulders wrenched her backwards in one great fluid motion. She bounded furiously back toward the house and open yard. And the coyote laughed.
Speaking of dogs in the plural sense, I finally installed a low-set trail camera aimed upstream on the creek where I've long seen coyote and occasional wolf tracks, among other four-leggeds. Our youngest son gifted us a new trail camera this weekend to widen our view of 'the neighbors', so to speak. I remembered a six-inch diameter hole I fell into earlier this fall, while I was walking along the creek edge, and marked its location with a long stick so to avoid repetition.
Using a saw log about two feet long I strapped the camera to it and inserted it into the hole (an almost perfect fit) its height above the ground about six inches, and above the creek ice about a foot. I stomped down all the grass in front of it (there wasn't much) so it wouldn't take videos with every movement of it (and they will, I've learned). I'll let it alone for a few weeks before I check its chip for images.
When we have imagination/perception like yours we don't need trail cameras, but in these days of imposed isolation, trail cameras offer inexpensive (depending how much you want to spend) other-world entertainment with which you can either gain exercise, every couple days or weeks, by walking to see what you've 'trapped' digitally or spend a little more money and get the kind that transfer the pictures to your computer without the effort, other than change batteries; a bit of advice: use lithium batteries or rechargeable batteries as trail cameras do quickly consume alkaline batteries when the temperatures drop. Lithium batteries are good to -40 to +140 and pay for themselves quickly.