Our Dogs Ground Us in the Now

Niels Aagaard Lytzen, "Golden Retriever on a Path"

Niels Aagaard Lytzen, “Golden Retriever on a Path” (1853)

Here’s a Mark Doty dog poem to help usher in the smells, sounds, and textures of spring. Are your thoughts tangled up in past regrets or daily worries? Your dog will bring you back to earth with its “Zen master’s bronzy gong” (a.k.a. barking).

What do golden retrievers retrieve? Us to ourselves.

Golden Retrievals

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 can never 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 friends, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master’s bronzy gong, calls you here,
entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

 

From Sweet Machines (NY: HarperFlamingo, 1998)

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