I spend the days intermittently
Badgering the dog,
Trying to be helpful,
Asking questions that, thankfully,
He can’t understand,
Otherwise he’d wonder at the
Logic of the world,
Where I, somehow,
Ended up in charge,
Always asking,
“Hungry? Are you hungry?”
Pointing at his bowl
Like a two-legged idiot,
Or “Outside? Outside?”
Pointing, still,
Whenever he glances at the door
When all he wants to do is
To sniff at the blossoming
Pear-smell drafting
Through the cracks.
Sometimes the question will
Simply be “Bed?”
Just one syllable,
One that he–who, himself,
Mostly speaks in single-syllables–
Knows best, sensing
That what I’m asking isn’t,
In so many syllables,
“Isn’t it your bedtime?”
But “Should we go to bed?”
A sincere question some nights,
As if one of us should be
The responsible one and
Remember we have to sleep.
He’ll wag his tail,
To show that the attempt on my part
To make myself useful
With pointless questions
Has been appreciated, even if it is
Completely unnecessary,
The way I’ll say to him,
“Good boy,”
For barking at a cat,
As if cats are a problem
That, I agree, need solving.
I forget, sometimes, that we have
Our own separate hungers
That lead us to the bowl,
Our own separate bladders
To take care of,
And our own separate tiredness
That comes whether someone
Reminds us of it or not,
And I forget that my job here
Is mostly to open doors,
Place food in reach,
And pat at the quilt
Where, occasionally,
I’ll find him before me,
Having decided “Bed” all on his own,
Though he’ll wake and his
Tail will beat the bed in a
Pat-pat-pat.
Every so often, I’ll turn to him
And ask, “What should we do?”
Not expecting an answer,
Though if he were to wag his tail
And bark, I’d take his meaning,
A syllable I can understand:
I’d open the door
And go along with the plan,
The leash slack between us,
Both of us running in the same direction,
With the same wild intent.
“Collared” first appeared in Muddy River Poetry Review
Goddfrey Hammit. 