My Bearded Collie
Posted: 01 Apr 2021, 20:33
My Bearded Collie
I brush my bearded collie’s fur
the way I brushed my daughter’s
flowing hair, tenderly.
Perhaps Sheri is too like me. Does she feel
she's never lived up to her potential,
years lost like unpublished poetry?
My sheepdog has never seen a lamb
though I imagine her
chasing after them in the park,
her deep barking at shadows
the result of her shaggy fur
obscuring her eyes.
She’s most content lying in grass,
gazing up for hours, as if admiring
the sky’s endless sheared wool.
Her large eyes studying me
remind me of a long-haired
professor of mine,
a shy young man reciting Keats
to the winsome female students
gathered up front at his classes.
Or like the overweight poet laureate
of our college, who ambled along
like a bear who’s entered
an abandoned Klondike cabin,
following its instincts
the way miners follow a vein of gold
or a poet follows a line of verse.
I think of Coleridge conjuring up words
as he strays off path.
Careful not to block William’s straighter path,
he talks, talks, talks, throwing ideas
at William the way a sheepdog
shaking after a bath
flings off beads of radiant water.
Sheri gazes at me, about to interrupt
but notices me lost
in wool gathering, Kubla Khan on my lap
as I invest another evening,
eyes half closed, revising a poem.
Where is my Mariner
after decades of work?
How do I justify my last 30 years?
Maybe they're just bungled lines
searching for a perfect close.
I have no promises to keep tonight
and yawn, stroking Sheri’s head.
Drowsy, she settles by the fireplace
and its panting flames.
I watch as her left paw twitches,
nuzzled by a lamb. Behind a veil
of fur, she counts sheep.
I brush my bearded collie’s fur
the way I brushed my daughter’s
flowing hair, tenderly.
Perhaps Sheri is too like me. Does she feel
she's never lived up to her potential,
years lost like unpublished poetry?
My sheepdog has never seen a lamb
though I imagine her
chasing after them in the park,
her deep barking at shadows
the result of her shaggy fur
obscuring her eyes.
She’s most content lying in grass,
gazing up for hours, as if admiring
the sky’s endless sheared wool.
Her large eyes studying me
remind me of a long-haired
professor of mine,
a shy young man reciting Keats
to the winsome female students
gathered up front at his classes.
Or like the overweight poet laureate
of our college, who ambled along
like a bear who’s entered
an abandoned Klondike cabin,
following its instincts
the way miners follow a vein of gold
or a poet follows a line of verse.
I think of Coleridge conjuring up words
as he strays off path.
Careful not to block William’s straighter path,
he talks, talks, talks, throwing ideas
at William the way a sheepdog
shaking after a bath
flings off beads of radiant water.
Sheri gazes at me, about to interrupt
but notices me lost
in wool gathering, Kubla Khan on my lap
as I invest another evening,
eyes half closed, revising a poem.
Where is my Mariner
after decades of work?
How do I justify my last 30 years?
Maybe they're just bungled lines
searching for a perfect close.
I have no promises to keep tonight
and yawn, stroking Sheri’s head.
Drowsy, she settles by the fireplace
and its panting flames.
I watch as her left paw twitches,
nuzzled by a lamb. Behind a veil
of fur, she counts sheep.