April is National Poetry Month: Dog Music

Dog Music is an anthology edited by Joseph Duerner and Jim Simmerman dedicated to dogs. I really love the collection, but as always with poems about pets, too many of them are sad. Today I didn't want to share a poem about the death of a dog. Here is a happier one about a springer spaniel named Cynthia.

Lines on a Dog's Face

Wallace said, "What the eye beholds may be
The text of life," and in this case it is
The Springer, Cynthia, whose eyes
Are the brown corridors of vaduity,
Moral deserts where the absolute Nothing
Is, or nothing but her repetitions,
The fence line patrol, the daily quarrels
With the cat, begging always for scraps
And a nap to sleep it off, then waiting
Alert for something to be known.

Agent of operation, living primordium,
Memoir of Something clearly in her stare
Which would say only, "I have known this
For a very long time, retriever
Of the stick locked in crocodile teeth,
Living the life of the fanciful
Scenario, chasing doves, the evening
Meal, her wrinkles busily playing
Out a program, a sontermporary opinion,
The repetitions that govern her earth, and mine.

-Michael Gessner

My springer spaniel Annie