Prodigal Dog

April 27 2020

When the prodigal dog reappears

from her regular morning odyssey

investigating the neighbourhood,

her adopted sister, the homebody

sniffs her top-to-bottom and paw-to-paw,

tail whipsawed and ears perked-up
in bright-eyed excitement.

Like a forensic exam

she reconstructs her itinerary

by means of smell.

How much she can tell

with just her nose,

an entire universe of scent

that is closed to us humans.

One day, I should attach a small camera

to the wandering dog

so I, too, can share in her adventures;

where she pokes-in her nose,

when she rolls in who-knows-what,

and just which cat

she faces-off with.

The other dogs

in her entourage,

the garbage she interrogates.

To live the life of a dog

unburdened by thought or fear

or rumination.

How refreshing

such an unreflective act of being would feel,

plodding along in the now

nose to the ground.

She returns

and we greet like she's been gone for years.

She has stories to tell,

and I would sit and listen

if only I could hear.

My 2 dogs and I live in the country a long way from the road, which itself is not much travelled. And they're not the sort of dogs who would stray very far from home or run away. Which means that they have free reign: the can be out when they want, untied and unfenced. Mostly, they hang out at the neighbours' and play with the other dogs. I suspect there is a lot of sleeping going on, especially when there's warm sun. But I don't really know: they're on their own; they get to fully inhabit their dogginess.

My first dog, Skookum, has always been very much an outdoor dog. From the day Rufus joined us a a pup, she has been fascinated by her older counterpart: sniffing her avidly, climbing all over her, inciting her to play. So when Skookum returns from her wanderings, Rufus rouses herself from her favourite couch and sniffs her all over, as avidly as when she was a puppy: endlessly fascinated and informed by smells of which I have absolutely no inkling.

We rely on sight. We're OK with sound. But both are of the moment. While smell has a temporal aspect: it lingers; it decays; it evolves. So smell exists across time as well as space. This is a dimension of sensory experience we miss.

I'm very grateful I can give my dogs this kind of freedom. And I love seeing Rufus' undisguised excitement. If there is such a thing as reincarnation, one couldn't do much better than coming back as a Labrador Retriever!

Taking Your Place

April 26 2020

There is no eye contact

in line.

Just as we take our place

keeping just the right space between us,

the force field

of social distance

no one needs explained.

Still, we notice.

How people dress themselves.

Who is standing together

and who alone.

The shady-looking guy

you want to keep an eye on,

and the heart-stopping woman

in 3-alarm red.

And listen-in, of course.

Conversational fragments

you can't help but overhear.

And those you hear by halves

when someone takes a call.

A marital spat in public

that would make a teamster blush,

and the two besotted lovers
who nuzzle, fondle, carry on 
as if they were talking in private
or just don't give a damn.

There's adolescent slang

you're not meant to understand,

and a questionably groomed man

muttering to himself.

While an older married couple

are standing hand-in-hand,

in a calm comfortable silence

they wear like well-worn clothes.

Except those times

you take a furtive glance

and your eyes briefly lock.

When you feel your face flush red

and your heart quicken.

And all you can do to explain

is nod your head

force an awkward smile

and sharply turn away.

I suppose this poem has special resonance in this time of social distancing. (I am writing in the midst of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, a note I feel I should include for future readers.) Which would more accurately be called physical distancing. But either way, the social convention of personal space and personal boundaries is powerful, if informal. Even waiting in line, perhaps preoccupied with conversation or looking at a screen, we manage to sort ourselves. And if you do happen to accidentally make eye contact, you feel apologetic, self-conscious, caught out.

I'm told that eavesdropping on one half of phone conversation can be particularly annoying, because it's hard to ignore or tune-out: your brain – that incessantly pattern-seeking human brain – keeps trying to fill in the blanks, complete the unheard half of the exchange. So rather than recede into the background noise, it keeps drawing you back.

Otherwise, I find it odd how some people don't edit themselves in public. They behave as if they're all alone, occupying their sovereign space, even when out in the world. Groups of teenagers, especially; who seem unable to perceive anything beyond the circle of their friends. And, of course, young lovers; who have eyes only for each other, and can easily be excused such indiscretion!

Sun Ascending 

April 25 2020

As it ascends in spring

the strengthening sun

slants directly in

through the big picture window

that faces west.

Like an accusing finger

extending into corners

and distant reaches,

singling out

lost chew toys

missed dust bunnies

and unswept crumbs.

Or as a single bare bulb

dangling from above

on its long electric wire

interrogates the room;

extracting secrets

revealing treasures

and bringing the hidden to light.

But sometimes

it's better not to know.

Ignorance is bliss,

and in the darkness of winter

we are not only content in our sloth

but grateful

for its offer of rest.

While in the heat of summer

when the sun is high

and the blinds are drawn

we really can't be bothered,

not guilty at all

leaving the cleaning to fall.

But the spring sun is direct

and unsparing.

Which is why we clean

this season of rebirth,

the stuffy rooms

unbeaten rugs

and months of shedding fur.

Spring has sprung,

and we are hibernating animals

stretching and yawning

as we emerge from our lairs,

blinking

in the unaccustomed light.

Signs of Spring

April 24 2020

One spring

it was a sapsucker

hammering loudly against the house.

I have since learned 
that these are male birds

in the frenzy of heat,

avian lotharios

displaying how loud they are

for the sake of sex.

Another, it was deer

emerging in curious abundance,

ghosting out from trees

and dashing across the roads;

stepping nimbly on the blacktop,
stopping to lick

its winter salt.

After a hard season, close to starved;

in moth-eaten coats,

ribs showing

eyes dull.

And the peepers, of course,

who are fortified with antifreeze

and chorus every spring

no matter what;

even when snow persists

and the lake remains frozen.

In cold rivulets

that have already begun to flow.

In small pools

in the forest underbrush,

warmed by decomposition

and strong April sun.

Soon, the geese will return,

cantankerous, in their ragged V's

as they jostle and honk.

They alight in freshly thawed fields,

strip-mining them

for grass and seeds and weeds

in an all-you-can eat buffet,

while liberally depositing

their foul waste.

But my first sign of spring

is the return of baseball

that most literary of sports.

The crack of the bat

the swell of the crowd

the announcer's southern drawl.

A game on the radio

in the theatre of the mind

from some lush green diamond,

driving at night

on a quiet back-road;

the heater's steady hum

the dashboard's warm glow.

Where the peepers

go quiet all at once

as my car approaches.

And where I keep careful watch

for the deer who slip across

under cover of dark.

I'm pleased how this turned out: each stanza having its own character, each animal representing a different sensibility. So there is the sexual heat of those single-minded birds, the desperation of the deer, and the persistence and resilience of the peepers. And finally, there are the social but fractious geese, as annoying as they are charismatic.

When I started, I had no idea where this poem was going. All I knew was I wanted to get at the sense of spring as an opening up, a beginning. I recalled my experience with the sapsuckers (it was more than once!), and this seemed a good start. After that, I felt committed to more animals!

I've written once before about their hammering, which gave me pause. Am I plagiarizing myself? (Is such a thing even possible?!!) ...But then, why not revisit? I often do, with the hope that the second try (or third) will turn out better: keeping at it, until I finally get it right!

When I'd gone on long enough, and felt I risked losing the reader, I couldn't resist my favourite and abiding sign of spring: opening day. How could I leave that out, even if it didn't quite fit with the rest of the poem? Especially this year, when the Covid-19 pandemic has indefinitely delayed baseball.

After that, I felt obliged to end with a stanza that called back to the animals. Which I hope cinches the poem tight, and gives a sense of completion.

Good Producers

April 23 2020

Beyond our back fence

and the next yard

and one street over

were farmers' fields.

Where cows roamed freely;

heads bent to the grass,

bristly tails

swishing at flies.

And not standard cattle

like the big black-and-white Holsteins,

those good producers

of industrial milk.

But rather Jersey cows,

who are smaller

and have soft brown eyes

with long delicate lashes.

Who are known for their butterfat

which no wants anymore.

Now overrun

by low-rise walk-ups,
fast food and strip malls

and 4-lane roads.

Because the mega-city has sprawled

since I was a child,

the distant suburbs swallowed up

by a ravenous metropolis.

So Old MacDonald's cows

are now penned into feedlots,

and the halcyon fields

zoned and paved.

And I have become

an official old-timer

lamenting my long-lost days.

Listened to indulgently

and gently patronized.

So that even I

find it harder and harder

to believe it was so,

when it seems easier to imagine

I've simply submerged the past

in a tepid bath of nostalgia.

I now live

in semi-wilderness,

on a protected shore

in the boreal forest

north of Lake Superior.

When there are 5 billion more of us,

and what few wild places are left

have become all the more precious.

And when what our children will remember

of these final days

will also seem incredible

to future historians.

The end of nature

or the end of growth?

Fields paved over

or wild and slow?

Big

and black-and-white

and bred to be faster?

Or small brown cows

with liquid eyes

and girlish lashes?

This poem was written in the midst of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. A time when that farmer's field would seem incredible to a child living in Toronto's North York. But that world exists in living memory. As does a world where there were “only” 3 billion of us.

I think that childhood suburb makes a good metaphor for the environmental crises we are now facing. And it was a good way for me to ventilate; to make my point without being too heavy-handed – too preachy, hectoring, direct. Which I get to do now! (Not heavy-handed, that is, except perhaps when I said these final days: which could be read as the final days of this pandemic; but could (and should) be read as the end of us!)

As we overpopulate, encroach on nature, want more and more, and believe we are exempt from natural law, the planet becomes less diverse, less resilient, and less sustainable. And our civilization, more perilous. Until we begin to regard ourselves as part of nature, instead of separate; stewards, instead of masters; and more humble about our place in the universe instead of at its centre, we are destined to fail. Until we become more modest in our appetites and our consumption, we will inevitably run into immovable limits.

This is the common denominator of the two great crises we face: both climate change and pandemic. One is a result of our filling the oceans and air with carbon. And the other is a result of our we encroaching on wild places; deforesting, displacing bats, and exposing ourselves to novel zoonoses. One is slower moving, the other fast. But both are inevitable as we continue as we have. They are absolutely not the improbable or even hypothetical events we tend to see them as. Anyone who was caught off guard by Covid-19 was not paying attention. And those who dispute or discount the seriousness of anthropogenic climate change will be condemned by history ...if there are any historians left to notice.

I'm not sure how much of this memory is actually mine, and how much confabulated by what I've been told. As usual, I'm suspicious of memory. But whether it belongs to me, or is more in the realm of family lore, I know the facts to be true: Redmount Road, then Palm Drive, and then a line that was the outskirts of Toronto, beyond which there were farmer's fields and – presumably – cows. If not when I was a child, then right around when I was born.

When I say protected shore, I'm referring to “my” lake (Hazelwood), which is a conservation area and therefore free of motorized vehicles: no outboards, jet skis, or snow machines. So hardly pristine (which was the word I used in my first draft), since the area was logged many years ago and is fully road accessible; but “protected”, in a relative sense, from the full onslaught of modernity.

Rufus

Aug 22 2020

When Rufus was a new pup

we would hike through the woods

with all the other dogs.

And while she was thrilled

just to be among them

she was mostly ignored.

It was a golden fall

and I recall every day as perfect,

sunlight slanting through the trees

and a soft carpet of leaves

underfoot.

She would dash ahead

on her stubby legs

until she was exhausted;

fearless, in her naïveté

and in a constant state of wonder.

And I would walk behind

my little brown dumpling,

her excited tail erect

and her round pink butthole

staring me in the face;

cute, but unbecoming

and decidedly impolite.

Until she tired.

When I would lie supine

on the forest floor

and she would cuddle against my chest;

eyes drifting shut

breaths coming quickly.

And in a couple of seconds

she was out,

slipping innocently into sleep

with an ease I could only envy.

Parents always tell me

how soon their kids grow up,

how early life

seems all a blur.

Which is what's best about a dog —

they get big even faster than us

and then they grow old

but they never really grow up.

Rufus,

my girl dog who has a boy's name

but doesn't know the difference.

Rufus,

who doesn't care what anybody thinks

about her private parts

or bother with secrets.

She still walks

waggling her behind

with her tail held high.

And I still call her my little dumpling butthole.

Even though

she is now a big dog;

who has learned to be civilized,

and is not so surprised by the world,

and can easily

outrun us all.

As I was re-reading my last poem, Skookum, I noticed the lost opportunity for even more word-play in the first stanza: the obvious word “cuddly”; and then my pet name, which was (and is) “little dumpling butthole”. Except, as I started to write, I realized that I'd somehow dumbly conflated my two dogs, and had unwittingly started a poem about Rufus I never intended to write. Congenitally averse to waste, of course, I couldn't just leave it alone. And I'm glad I didn't. Because Rufus deserves her own poem. And because I feel so gratified to have memorialized in words that truly golden fall and our first explorations together.

Skookum

April 21 2020

I brought her home

held in the palm of my hand,

all fat puppy tummy

and stubby muzzle

and unquenchable life force.

In the years since then

    –   ten, and counting   –

it's as if she's been a big dog forever

it's so hard to remember

watching her grow.

So side by side

we've been ageing together

in the imperceptible manner of age;

for me, one more decade

to add to those before,

while she has leapfrogged over

and become a bright-eyed elder.

The fur around her nose,

has turned a mousy grey,

like an old man's whiskers

who can't be bothered to shave.

And the bones along her back stick up

where muscle is slowly wasting,

like the armoured spine

of some dwarf stegosaurus.

She takes her time.

She sleeps more.

She's somewhat more compliant.

Or perhaps just unsure, instead of less wilful,

like a senior citizen

confused by new technology.

And this noble dog

who would tolerate only so much petting

now eagerly jumps into bed with me,

spooning against my body

in a way that comforts us both.

Her animal warmth

her beating heart

her loud irregular breathing.

But she is a good dog

and still sniffs and barks and chases.

Still plays

with her little sister

with her usual gentle forbearance.

Is still obsessed with food;

and as our mothers all told us

a good appetite

is a sign of good health.

We love our pets,

even knowing that they will leave us

before our time.

We watch them grow old

like a cautionary tale

of own inexorable fate.

So I can only hope

I will age with the grace

of my beautiful brown retriever.

My best friend, always;

my lifelong teacher.

I found myself tempted to write another dog poem after reading this recent piece by the incomparable Billy Collins (see below). Or perhaps more compelled than tempted. I really like to avoid them. Not that they aren't heartfelt or true. It's more that they're just too darn easy; that they flirt with sentimentality; and that I think would strike the many non-dog-lovers of the world as inexcusably self-indulgent. After all, as Billy Collins puts it, “ ...who really cares about another person's dog?”

Skookum is now 10 3/4. I probably wouldn't have so much noticed her ageing if it wasn't for the contrast with my other chocolate Lab, Rufus; who is a mere 3 3/4 at the time of this writing, and still has all the enthusiasm and wonder of a puppy. They are adopted sisters who – despite being of the same breed and the best of buddies – are very different in temperament: Rufus, compliant, very touchy-feely, and surprisingly mellow; while Skookum is wilful and a bit standoffish and always into mischief. But are both delightful, nevertheless. Rufus has so much charisma I sometimes find I'm paying less attention to Skookum than she deserves. So I hope that this poem serves as a bit of a corrective.

“Skookum”, btw, is taken from Chinook (which is a pidgin trade language from the west coast of North America), and it means “all things good”. I came across this word when I was waiting for my new dog (who is also my first dog) and trying to come up with a good name. It immediately struck me as perfect. And it is. The meaning, as well as the wonderful sound of the word.

The ending of the poem may strike you as curious. My lifelong teacher? She hasn't taught me how to program a computer or scan a line of poetry, but she has taught me about living in the moment; about being oblivious to vanity and materialism and status; about always being ready for fun; about how to love unconditionally and without judgment; and about priorities in life. Dogs have much to teach us. If only we could also unlearn our foreknowledge of death. Or maybe not. Because without that knowledge, would we really live more freely? Or would we simply live less mindfully?

Walking My Seventy-Five-Year-Old Dog
by Billy Collins

She's painfully slow,
so I often have to stop and wait
while she sniffs some roadside weeds
as if she were reading the biography of a famous dog.

And she's not a pretty sight any more,
dragging one of her hind legs,
her coat too matted to brush or comb,
and a snout white as a marshmallow.

We usually walk down a disused road
that runs along the edge of a lake,
whose surface trembles in a high wind
and is slow to ice over as the months grow cold.

We don't walk very far before
she sits down on her worn haunches
and looks up at me with her rheumy eyes.
Then it's time to carry her back to the car.

Just thinking about the honesty in her eyes,
I realize I should tell you
she's not really seventy five. She's fourteen.
I guess I was trying to appeal to your sense

of the bizarre, the curiosities of the sideshow.
I mean who really cares about another person's dog?
Everything else I've said is true,
except the part about her being fourteen.

I mean she's old, but not that old,
and it's not nice to divulge the true age of a lady.