Saturday's Poem: Golden Retrievals

Terra and Monte

We recently put up a bookcase in the corner where Terra's little sheepskin bed used to be, but even all this time after she left us, I still find the occasional dog hair embedded in the carpet, still miss her canine companionship, and think of her whenever I go outside into the smorgasbord of smells and sounds and movement that she loved.

So when I came upon this dog poem the other day, purely by chance, I smiled, remembering our own little Zen master.

GOLDEN RETRIEVALS by Mark Doty

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention

seconds at a time. Catch? I don’t think so.

Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who’s—oh

joy—actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

I’m off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue

of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?

Either you’re sunk in the past, half our walk,

thinking of what you never can bring back,

or else you’re off in some fog concerning

—tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:

to unsnare time’s warp (and woof!), retrieving,

my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here,

entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.