CANINE
Their tooth is an incandescent concentration that
gorges black gapes in trouser legs and slobbery
Slazengers; it is cut deep from the memory of
a fiery palaeolithic stand off.
Their house is first prize in a Dutch auction, a
satirical miniature, happiness in sunshine turned
sad by
the heart's cruel desire to indulgently
whimper at sadness and scoff.
Their ear is that point never returned to in the book;
it listens to every word we hardly notice and
quickly forget; detects strangers where there’s
barely a clue.
Their coat is that contagion of colour we admire,
that cohesion
of confusion brushed by the law,
potentially the cause of bathetic flattery or
flea rug dropped without ado.
Their toy is the patience of a saint, the rosella
on the
creaking fence, the mustard
juiceless
tintinnabulating shinbone they do not bury
somewhere conspicuous leaving a tame curve.
Their tail is, like their
bark, dependently
independent, irresponsibly responsive, inexpressibly
expressive, unconditionally conditioned,
dogmatically domesticated, and appears to be
connected to their tongue by the same nerve.
Their breakfast constitutes
the ravages already
left before nightfall, gruel fuel slopped from
a grand
can, uncategorizable lumps and holey dollar
biscuits that get them to fire on.
Their day is a heinzer of copping the accident waiting
to happen,
guarding
the hours while revolutions
hatch, unreluctantly chasing waves again, and
grabbing the premiership on the siren.
Their verse attempts wander way off track, go to
and fro
in double Dutch, in unrepentant mongrel
nashers, ending up beside the doused daisy bush
of an
irretrievable
moment.
Their eye is an analogy of type - sleepy as labrador,
gleamy as chihuahua, clever as kelpie, duplicitous
as dingo;
has the mystique of a snooker champion’s
in a tournament.
Their master is the anthropomorphic Other whose
whimmish voice becomes the stop or start of their
next activity : bounding over the dawning oval,
sleeping under the afternoon lemon tree.
Their tiredness is that of the conductor on her
midnight tram, the truckie on Dutch courage for
his last consignment this week, the scholar
studying late in the library.
Their drinking water lands crystalline from its
sky-high leaping cycle, thin into an isoceles
between the backlane bluestone; cool and good,
it overflows
the ice-cream bucket of their years.
Their star is a Dutch treat, dwells in its own space,
keeps its
own counsel, larger than all others;
it is easily ignored in a trice, loosens single
tears.
