Retrievals

Thanks to teaching some modern poetry this year, I came across this poem by Mark Doty:

"Golden Retrievals"

Fetch? Balls and sticks capture my attention
seconds at a time. Catch? I don't think so.
Bunny, tumbling leaf, a squirrel who's -- oh
joy -- actually scared. Sniff the wind, then

I'm off again: muck, pond, ditch, residue
of any thrillingly dead thing. And you?
Either you're sunk in the past, half our walk,
thinking of what you can never bring back,

or else you're off in some fog concerning
-- tomorrow, is that what you call it? My work:
to unsnare time's warp (and woof!), retrieving,
my haze-headed friend, you. This shining bark,

a Zen master's bronzy gong, calls you here,
entirely, now: bow-wow, bow-wow, bow-wow.

 

---

This seemed apropos a week ago (by the time you read this) when I was looking ahead and writing all of these entries: there I was worrying about getting together two weeks' worth of entries--in a school year during which I've barely been able to get out one entry each day, mind you--and my girlfriend's adorable, wonderful, supremely annoying puppy is demanding my attention. Play with me she says by approaching me where I sit on the couch with my laptop and pushing her blue rubber bone onto my hands (and keyboard). Sometimes (as, for instance, this exact moment) I can multitask by playing tug-o-war with my left hand while my right hand and a large percentage of my consciousness focuses on typing.

 

Much of the time, though, she pulls me away from my "work" entirely, drawing me into a full-blown game of tug-o-war and fetch, perhaps with "tag" thrown in for good measure. Presumably, all this has something to do with why we get pets, retrieving us to the present, always the present. It's a gift they have.

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