Friday, July 01, 2005

Puttin' On The Dog

Lose yourself in the dandy imagery of this poem:

From LISEL MUELLER's Alive together: New and selected poems,
Louisiana State University Press, 1996


WHAT THE DOG PERHAPS HEARS

If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him home to us,
then silence is perhaps
the sound of spiders breathing
and roots mining the earth;
it may be asparagus heaving,
headfirst, into the light
and the long brown sound
of cracked cups, when it happens.
We would like to ask the dog
if there is a continuous whir
because the child in the house
keeps growing, if the snake
really stretches full length
without a click and the sun
breaks through clouds without
a decibel of effort,
whether in autumn, when the trees
dry up their wells, there isn't a shudder
too high for us to hear.
What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?
For us there was no birth cry,
the newborn bird is suddenly here,
the egg broken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothing when the world changed.

3 Comments:

At Sat Jul 02, 07:07:00 AM PDT, Anonymous Anonymous said...

That was cool! Thanks for sharing. Seizure later...

 
At Wed Jul 06, 09:03:00 AM PDT, Blogger Lorie said...

I think this is my favorite poem yet. Or have I already said that...?

 
At Wed Jul 06, 10:07:00 AM PDT, Blogger Bobby said...

You have not.

Beware the dogs. I don't like it that they can hear things we can't. It could enable them to get the drop on us somehow.

 

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