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Dogs That Know When Their Owners Are Coming Home
It’s
the sniff of powers unknown
hint
of something to discover
but
mainly it’s the length of it
claims
more attention than is normal
also
it’s the capitals.
My
life would be different if I could
just
give out the titles
let
other people fill in the words below
paint
their own picture of that dog
with
its nose stuck as far into the letter box
as
it will go.
If
I had precognition of a person’s return
would
I sit by the door looking for love?
Maybe
I would. Maybe I have.
Dogs
which have owners are lucky dogs.
I
found the book in the library between one called
How
to be a responsible Dog owner,
and
one by Jung, misplaced, which says
in
Life After Death, one of its chapters
Reason
sets the boundaries too narrowly for us
and
would have us accept only the known.
In
the dog book some chapters are:
The
bonds between dog and person
Returns
by bus, train and plane.
Logs
of dogs’ behavior.
Could
dogs smell their owners approaching?
Why
do so many dogs not react?
The
question of what happens when owners change
their
minds about coming home, is one
that
won’t go away even if I wish it would.
I
don’t even have a dog.
I
have a recurring dream, though, that someone’s given
me
a small dog
to
look after and for some unknown reason I put it
in
a cupboard under the stairs
then
suddenly remember it weeks later.
I
open the door and a bundle of skin falls out
looks
like a baby
but
it’s still alive so I decide to feed
it
better, hope no one
else
noticed me being archetypal.
Dogs
are odd, I often think, the way
they
seem happy
to
live with beings which have
body
shapes and smells
quite
different to their own.
Marion Tracy
published
in Heat Literary Journal,
Plain Vanilla
Futures, Heat 20,
2009
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