Dogs in the Morning Light

Responsive to the tune of lawns and trees
Dogs sally forth
In whiskery mongrel innocence: all over town
The irresistible rumour of the day
Prickles their hides and sets their bladders singing
Of doggy derring-do beyond their dreams.
No street but has its canine tributary
-Confluent in lanes,
They swirl about in bright-eyed vortices,
Whirl-pools of snap and sniff and pink-tongued grin.


Quizzical howdies done, the world's a labyrinth
Of tortuous delight through which his nose
Leads on each quivering Theseus.
Dazed, dazed they go
Into the maze of history where the sharpest
Barkers fall silent . . .
                                 O Humble retrospection, whose sole means
Lies in the bleached unanswerable
Excreta of the past, the spicy airs
Rising from every spot where dogs have paused,
And, pausing, thrown a bridge across Time's stream!


Let the bells swing slow, their clappers muffled be,
All over town, in many a public place,
Dogs are having their first one for the day,
Rapt vacuity on each raffish face.


by Bruce Dawe