If Feeling Isn't In It
You
can take it away, as far as I'm concerned—I'd rather spend the afternoon with a
nice dog. I'm not kidding. Dogs have what a lot of poems lack: excitements and
responses, a sense of play the ability to impart warmth, elation . . . .
Howard Moss
Howard Moss
Dogs
will also lick your face if you let them.
Their
bodies will shiver with happiness.
A
simple walk in the park is just about
the
height of contentment for them, followed
by
a bowl of food, a bowl of water,
a
place to curl up and sleep. Someone
to
scratch them where they can't reach
and
smooth their foreheads and talk to them.
Dogs
also have a natural dislike of mailmen
and
other bringers of bad news and will
bite
them on your behalf. Dogs can smell
fear
and also love with perfect accuracy.
There
is no use pretending with them.
Nor
do they pretend. If a dog is happy
or
sad or nervous or bored or ashamed
or
sunk in contemplation, everybody knows it.
They
make no secret of themselves.
You
can even tell what they're dreaming about
by
the way their legs jerk and try to run
on
the slippery ground of sleep.
Nor
are they given to pretentious self-importance.
They
don't try to impress you with how serious
or
sensitive they are. They just feel everything
full
blast. Everything is off the charts
with
them. More than once I've seen a dog
waiting
for its owner outside a café
practically
implode with worry. “Oh, God,
what
if she doesn't come back this time?
What
will I do? Who will take care of me?
I
loved her so much and now she's gone
and
I'm tied to a post surrounded by people
who
don't look or smell or sound like her at all.”
And
when she does come, what a flurry
of
commotion, what a chorus of yelping
and
cooing and leaps straight up into the air!
It's
almost unbearable, this sudden
fullness
after such total loss, to see
the
world made whole again by a hand
on
the shoulder and a voice like no other.
dogs rule...so do cats.
ReplyDeleteyou know me annie... i am all about dogs!
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