The Dogs in Dutch Paintings by David Graham
My apologies for missing yesterday. When you leave for work at 6am, rush home right afterward to walk your dog before heading 45 minutes away for book club, not to return home until 9pm… you go to bed instead of posting a poem. Anyway, I’ve gained a new appreciation for dogs after getting one a year ago (has it been a year???). My adorable little pooch is currently curled up in her bed. Alas that I have not the talent to paint her like the Dutch masters!
Update: You can read this poem and others on the poet’s website.
The Dogs in Dutch Paintings
By David Graham
How shall I not love them, snoozing
right through the Annunciation? They inhabit
the outskirts of every importance, sprawl
dead center in each oblivious household.
They’re digging at fleas or snapping at scraps,
dozing with noble abandon while a boy
bells their tails. Often they present their rumps
in the foreground of some martyrdom.
What Christ could lean so unconcernedly
against a table leg, the feast above continuing?
Could the Virgin in her joy match this grace
as a hound sagely ponders an upturned turtle?
No scholar at his huge book will capture
my eye so well as the skinny haunches,
the frazzled tails and serene optimism
of the least of these mutts, curled
in the corners of the world’s dazzlement.
