Miss Daisy, Roving Reporter

I Know Dogs

Hi

Hope all is well with you and your dog.

I can’t wait to tell you and all my buddies including Dr. Dogma about the poem Garrison Keillor read to us. It’s about dogs…above average dogs. Dogs that wake us up to the other half of the universe. William Stafford says it all in this poem and reinforces my article 5 Reasons to Get A Dog.

Found this in an email from Garrison Keillor, this morning. If you’d like to listen to him reading, click here. (RealAudio)

Poem: “Choosing A Dog” by William Stafford, from The Way It Is. © Graywolf Press, 1998.

Choosing A Dog

“It’s love,” they say. You touch
the right one and a whole half of the universe
wakes up, a new half.

Some people never find
that half, or they neglect it or trade it
for money or success and it dies.

The faces of big dogs tell, over the years,
that size is a burden: you enjoy it for awhile
but then maintenance gets to you.

When I get old I think I’ll keep, not a little
dog, but a serious dog,
for the casual, drop-in criminal -

My kind of dog, unimpressed by
dress or manner, just knowing
what’s really there by the smell.

Your good dogs, some things that they hear
they don’t really want you to know -
it’s too grim or ethereal.

And sometimes when they look in the fire
they see time going on and someone alone,
but they don’t say anything.

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