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And Every Dog His Day
There’s no such thing as dog-years. You were fooled
By sentimental nincompoops who don’t
Know how to count correctly, twits unschooled
In logic or in basic facts who won’t
Admit that they are misinformed: A year’s
A year, no more, for any creature caught
Inside of one. The bucketful of tears
You’ll cry, despite the sappy lie you bought,
Won’t taste the slightest bit less salty, when
The last good-bye is spoken, just because
You multiplied by seven. Good young men
Have died whose total hours spent dozing was
About the same an average dog expects
In half as many days. To get a true
Idea what a canine span projects
To, count the years and then divide by two.
With due respect to idle napping dogs,
Their lifetimes are suspended while they sleep;
They are, at best, imperfect analogues
Of we who weep … and work to earn our keep.
First published in Poemeleon (2010)
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C.B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. Hundreds of his poems have appeared in scores of print and electronic journals out of North America, Great Britain, Ireland, Austria, Australia and India. His collection, Mortal Soup and the Blue Yonder was published in 2013 by White Violet Press.
Such a poem challenges the reader to come to terms with their own logic, comparisons, and emotions. Still there may be some assuaging of loss when thinking about pet age. To be sure “The bucketful of tears…Won’t taste the slightest bit less salty…”
There you go, Roy. We should all be careful what we take for granted.
“A year’s / A year, no more, for any creature caught / Inside of one” is exceedingly clever. This is a fun, and even thought-provoking, poem.
I’m sure that you, Cynthia, of all people, should have, by now, been caught inside a year.
This is a fascinating poem, C.B., for its stark, unsentimental message delivered in a matter-of-fact tone which makes one almost forget that this is excellent poetry. It’s quite a feat. The rhyming and enjambment are fantastic (I especially like the rhyme of dog and analogue.) But even more fascinating… there’s a fearlessness to this work in which you not only shatter fantasies but invoke a much larger canvas of mortality with those those “good young men” who, before dying, have slept as much as an average dog’s lifespan. A sobering fact to contemplate — especially for us dog-lovers. This poem will never be featured on a Hallmark card.
I got nothin’ against dogs, but every one of them’s a dog. Some comparisons are naturally and simply sad.
The tone is vaguely playful while the content is like a bucket of ice water and your mastery of form is all the more impressive for its subtlety. You make it look so easy!
It is easy, but even the easy is hard. I’m clinging on to form as best I can, and I’m not trying to be subtle about it.