Dog Days

June 28 2013

In the dog days
of summer
she drops,

legs giving way

in each patch of shade;

a slack marionette

who clatters into scattered limbs.

On hard packed ground,

where parched grass

is beaten brown,

some bolting weeds

still green.

Or baked concrete

cooling quick.

She pants

like a hundred metre sprint,
winter coat thinned
but still a misery.

In late July
the dog star rises
and persists until fall,
constant as man's

faithful companion.
The season of little ambition,
curiously named

for Sirius
heaven's brightest star.
When bored kids
count-down

to the end of seamless days,
the unspeakable secret

no one ever admits.
And working people sweat

in airless offices,

secretly wishing to quit.

The dog
who is inhumanly patient
and whose days all are seamless
is content to wait
sprawled in the shade,

sun-downing eyes

drifting closed.
Until her master calls,
and life is full
of instant purpose.
Meaning as flawlessly clear

as Canis Major's unwavering star,

on August nights
laser bright

in jet-black sky.

I think of the English expressions that disparage dogs: work like a dog, and treated like a dog, and dog-tired, and a dog's breakfast, and dogging it. So it's nice that this exceptionally noble animal is honoured by lending her name to the constellation that contains the brightest star.

Which is where "dog days of summer" originates: the time of year when the sky's brightest star rises -- Sirius, in Canis Major. Although namesake constellation or not, the image of a panting pooch collapsing in the shade would be perfect for the torpor of the dog days, anyway.

The poem turns on the incongruity between an exhausted dog and the brightest star. But then it ends as a tribute to an animal I both love and admire; an encomium to loyalty and companionship and constancy.

It's been a very long time since I wrote a "dog" poem. (In fact, I wasn't even sure I had another in me.) So I think I've shown sufficient self-denial to have earned the self-indulgence of this one!