Poetry Sunday

There are a lot of jokes being made now about how excited dogs are that their owners are home all day, every day, and are giving them lots and lots of walks. I know from experience that all those walks are wonderful for the young dogs, but not quite so much for those a bit on in years ...

Walking My Seventy-Five-Year-Old Dog

by Billy Collins

She's painfully slow,
so I often have to stop and wait
while she sniffs some roadside weeds
as if she were reading the biography of a famous dog.

And she's not a pretty sight any more,
dragging one of her hind legs,
her coat too matted to brush or comb,
and a snout white as a marshmallow.

We usually walk down a disused road
that runs along the edge of a lake,
whose surface trembles in a high wind
and is slow to ice over as the months grow cold.

We don't walk very far before
she sits down on her worn haunches
and looks up at me with her rheumy eyes.
Then it's time to carry her back to the car.

Just thinking about the honesty in her eyes,
I realize I should tell you
she's not really seventy-five. She's fourteen.
I guess I was trying to appeal to your sense

of the bizarre, the curiosities of the sideshow.
I mean who really cares about another person's dog?
Everything else I've said is true,
except the part about her being fourteen.

I mean she's old, but not that old,
and it's not nice to divulge the true age of a lady.

Have a good day, walk your dog, and then wash your hands when you're done. The dog will appreciate it ... the walk, I mean, not so much the hand washing.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend. More thoughts coming.

Bilbo