Dec 14, 2015 Original Poetry

Dog and Snout and Door, or, Unreasonable Sense
©December 14th, 2015
By Vijaya Sundaram

If a picture paints a thousand words,
I shall paint Her straining, pointing
Sense of smell, Her mystic Nose;
Knife-bladed, full of delicate velvet,
Wet with warm canine intuition,
Her Nose sketches out landscapes
Full of squirrels and raccoons.
And Her Nose, mapping
Topographic incongruities
And atmospheric pressure,
Leads me straight into the door.
My head connects.
Strange swim of stars and birds
Swarming around head and bursts
Of sharp sensation, a whack of
Reality across my snout!

Ah, see those Feet pad surely across
Landscapes of dream and desire
Snout and feet that hold dim
Yearning memories of a calm Mother.
 Memories of warm mother’s milk, and
Squirming bodies of fur — squealing
And squeaking memories.
Now, detecting butter and cheese
With impeccable precision, the Nose
Leads her straight to me.
See her hold on the world.
Her implacable hold, full of
Bitter resentment at Authority.

The world careens, galactic core
Glistens and beckons, but
The Nose holds steady.
See how that squirrel jumps
From its hilly hollow of logs
See how it logarithmically
Scales the senses, and makes
The Nose leap for a dream, as I follow
And slam face-first into the door
Leading to a world where logic
And magic marry and produce
Leaping birds and flying frogs —
When they sit, they stand, almost,
When they jump, they fly, almost.*

My nose grows, a bulbous fruit,
Full of outrage and tear-filled
Indignation.  Such indignity
When I slammed into that door!
And across the vast region of Nose
My senses detect alarm and
Despondency, and a dejection
Of dog-Tail.

Forgiveness, the function
Of love and understanding,
Makes herself scarce, then
Returns, a bride, full of
Shy reluctance at the threshhold
But willing, willing to endure.
For love conquers all,
Even a whack on the snout
By leaping Door,
Arising between Canine and me.

I shall now begin to paint
That picture of a thousand words —
Or perhaps, as a concession
To contrite Canine (contrite as concrete)
Only three hundred and fifty-two words
Unreasonably inviting sense.

_______________________________________________________

 *Reference to a round we sing in my family:
What a queer bird the frog are
When he sit he stand, almost
When he jump, he fly almost
When he sing, he cry almost,
And he ain’t got no tail.
Hardly, he ain’t got no tail.
And he sit on what he ain’t got, almost.

Tags: #Poetry, #Writing 101, Dog-Nose, Door, Fun, Human, Not-quite-nonsense poetry, Stars and Birds, Topological Contemplations