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.