Tag Archives: poem about dogs

The Monarch of Dogs

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The Monarch of Dogs

Morrie is the underdog. Diego’s top dog now.
Does one find this jockeying with horse or pig or cow?

Why does there need to be a boss now dogs don’t roam in packs?
I fear dog organization sound logic sadly lacks.

I am the queen of doggiedom in my house. There’s no need
for a boss of dogs to calculate their every deed.

Their kibble comes in cans and bags. Nobody needs to know
How to be the chieftain in bringing down a doe.

Perhaps they need a barking order as a way to tell
whose loud barking will predict the ring of the doorbell.

Perhaps they need to show me who deserves the premier pat
or the biggest food dish, or bone with the most fat.

And yet I love them both the same, in spite of any wishes.
I pat them equally and put their bones in equal dishes!

https://fivedotoh.com/2019/01/06/fowc-with-fandango-underdog/

Microcosm

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Click on any photo to enlarge all.

Microcosm

Solace from this angst-filled world can best be found at home.
It wraps around me snuggly under my protective dome.
Prioritizing calm and peace, I have a little chat
with a dog or bird or two, or maybe with a cat.

I lie snug in my hammock and survey the too-long grass
of my private little meadow where no evil comes to pass
short of combat between possums and dogs too poorly trained
to entertain these welcome guests in manners more restrained.

Their battles are, alas, short lived. The dogs always the winners.
As in the world, the bounty here goes to the biggest sinners.
The possum’s only infraction? It’s not a dog or cat
and its physical resemblance is too close to a rat.

And so the world injects itself into my little nest,
insisting the familiar is what we accept best.
These battles happen when I’m gone or when I’m fast asleep,
too lost to this too-conscious world, lost in a world more deep.

As things are on the outside, I fear they’re also here.
My world is not a perfect world, but simply a small mirror
to what is happening all around. It is without a doubt
those who have most everything keeping others out!

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The Clew of the “Tapa Rojo.”

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The Mystery of the Vanishing Red Tennis Ball Lids!!!!

My small dog is a fetcher, but oh, at what a cost.
I swear for every twenty balls I throw, one shows up lost.
I’ve been buying  tubes of tennis balls for many years,
yet within a few months, our supply is in arrears.
I go to buy another lot that vanishes the same.
Where are these balls? What eats them? What ambitious tree’s to blame
for hoarding them like fruit up high in assorted branches
where they are invisible, thwarting all our chances
to retrieve the orbs that are so vital for my throwing,
and in his pursuit of them, for Morrie’s come and going?

There is another mystery surrounding this adventure—
one that is more serious, occasioning my censure.
These tubes of tennis balls that come packaged in neat threes
so I can loft them from the pool to reside in trees,
happen to have covers that I find indispensible
and when you know the reason why, I’ll think you’ll find it sensible
that I hoard them like diamonds, a utilitarian treasure—
for it just so happens that they fit, measure for measure
my cans of open cat food, and dog food, too, precisely.
No tops bought for this purpose can seal the cans so nicely.

Since I feed seven animals two times every day,
there are always half-full cans I have to put away.
They have four different diets, and for every one I feed
I need a different can of food, so you can see my need
for those red tops that seal them up, free from any smell
that makes a fridge with human food smell like cat food Hell!
For my odor-free fridges, I’m fast in Wilson’s debt,
for I’ve had Morrie for four years and in that time, I bet 
I’ve purchased 15 tubes of balls for him to chase and chew.
So I should have 15 red tops. Still, I have only two!
Where can these tops be going? Is my dog-walker purloining them
to sell on the black market? And have tennis balls been joining them?

Are they being used as Frisbees by some child of a friend
who snatches them when I am not there to apprehend
this purloiner of cat food lids, this wily thief of tops,
knowing that no sane person would dare to call the cops
over a piece of plastic, no matter how securely
it hugs the tops of dog food cans–so snuggly and so purely?
Are dogs stealing and chewing them and burying them after?
Have the cats purloined them and stowed them in some rafter?
I’ve questioned sweet Yolanda who must think that I am crazy.
She only shakes her head at me, looking somewhat hazy.
“Donde estan mis tapas rojas?” Pasiano, on a breather,
does not seem to have a single clue of what I’m saying, either.

They point out other pet food lids. I’ve purchased quite a few,
but not one fits securely. Only tennis ball lids will do.
Each life contains its mysteries—mundane or scintillating—
concerning who put dents in cars or whom our kids are dating.
Things break, get lost or vanish by means less than pernicious,
and yet the regularity of my thefts is suspicious!
These valueless little objects to me are indispensible
and so I find the loss of them especially reprehensible!
Roll on the floor and laugh at me. Deride me if you must,
but I still view these petty thefts to be vile and unjust.
I’d like to solve the mystery. Stop the crime spree.  Put the skids on it,
so I can solve the crime and literally put the lids on it!

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Ragtag’s word of the day is clew.
Fandango’s word of the day is scintillating.
And, the Daily Addiction’s prompt is ambition.

Disappointing Petrarch (Three Shakespearean Sonnets for dVerse Poets)

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Three Wan Dogs before Their Feeding

Our mistress lies upon her bed too long,
her favorite silver thing upon her lap.
That she should put our feeding off is wrong.
We sit and stare at her through her door’s gap.

She taps upon her thing and taps and taps.
Sometimes she chortles, but we don’t know why.
Where formerly her bed was used for naps,
a favorite dog cuddled against her thigh,

she now spends all  her time there with that thing
as we sit hungry, waiting to be fed.
She seeks the nourishment that words can bring,
for she is sure that if she leaves her bed

before she finishes her sonnet, then
her muse will not agree to come again.


Three  Hungry Dogs Intent Upon Their Feeding

At last at last she opens up her door
and feeds our sister first, lest we devour
her food ourselves and then not leave the poor
dear girl with any sustenance to power

her barking at the other dogs who pass.
But now our mother fills our bowls as well––
each portion measured by a measuring glass.
Each second  we must wait becomes a Hell.

She scoops out first the dry and then the wet––
more for the big dog and less for the small.
We worry over how much food we’ll get,
remembering times when we had none at all.

But finally, our portions, too, are dished
(although not quite so full as we’d have wished.)


Three Patient Dogs after Their Feeding

Now see our dishes cleaned and neatly stacked?
Our human lolls once more upon her bed.
to write more stanzas that she formerly lacked
and free herself of rhymes that fill her head.

The small dog leaps upon her bed to lie
and garner a small scratching now and then.
We larger dogs lie watching from close by,
kept from our human in her iron pen.

See her now, look quizzical and rapt?
We know not what she thinks there on her back.
Where formerly she read or watched or napped,
she stews about just what her poems might lack.

For Shakespeare she is not, the silly goose.
Her talents? More in line with Dr. Seuss!!!

(Click on the first photo below to enlarge photos and read captions–also written in couplet form.)  Good grief. It’s my muse’s fault. The girl can’t help it!!)

We also hunger who only stand and wait
But soon our lady rises to the bait
While Frida begs her feed with pleading stare.
"She" portions out our food with motherly care.
Diego's next to feed, determined by age.
While Morrie waits impatient in his cage.
Though Morrie is always the last to feed, He makes up for it with ungodly speed.
And then, lest Frida leave a scrap of kibble, he licks her bowl free of each lasting dribble.
By then, our mom has gone back to her writing, before we've even finished with our biting.
Although he comes in last when being fed, at least he fits into our lady's bed.
Perhaps when this infernal poem is through, we'll win our lady's company anew.

 

A sonnet for dVerse Poets (Sorry, Petrarch.  These are Shakespearean!)

Natural Alarm Clock

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Natural Alarm Clock

I’m up before the Daily Prompt,
up before the sun.
Somehow I’ve started my new day
before the night is done.
The world is cloaked in darkness.
It’s too early for me,
yet wake up time’s whenever
Morrie needs to pee!

(Click on first photo to enlarge and see captions.)

 

Morrie’s bathroom with a view
Morrie, inspecting his new domain.

 

Always Behind Windows: Monday Windows Challenge

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Always Behind Windows

Not only on a Monday, but every day this week,
we’ve been locked behind windows, through which we have to peek
to see what’s going on inside, where all the good things are.
Other times, we’ve been inside, but now we’re kept afar.
Our noses sticking through the bars, our breath fogging the glass,
as intriguing as we find it, we hope these times soon pass.
When all this tiling madness is done and gone away,
we’ll have more freedom to run free each and every day.
No more behind windows, no more behind bars.
We’ll wander boundless in our world, where we will be the stars.
But for a few more days now, we’re sticking here like glue,
so we can tell these workmen exactly what to do!

 

https://mondaywindow.wordpress.com/2016/11/27/monday-november-28-2016/

Sacrificial Offering

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Sacrificial Offering

When the light of morning begins its sweep,
my alarm begins its ceaseless beep
and I leave my bed in a stumbling creep.
With only four scant hours of sleep,
the wall of morning seems rough and steep.

There’s an appointment I must keep.
The dogs who have not made a peep
now howl and bark and moan and weep
as they hear me digging deep
into the harvest they hope to reap.

Their kibble now I scoop and heap
into their bowls. They twist and leap.
As the light of morning ends its creep,
Its rays fall long and harsh and steep,
and they cease to howl and weep.

As they graze their bowls like starving sheep,
it’s now their jaws that twist and leap.
But the price of feeding is not cheap,
as our appointment once more we keep;
for I’ve had merely four hours sleep.

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