My Shepherd--Heather McHugh
A name's another thing
in dog-dom. Fido the Uberpooch is dead,
some singing's overcome the underhund.
The underhund's no private
nose or eye. Smells well, sights bound.
He cops his swill from the bar's back door,
scopes kibble out in big denominations;
even his birthday suit
is finest furs; you'll have
no other dog before me, he rebarks; I'll be
boygone. I'll be
downhome, awaiting his arrival.
What I mean by home is
totally upgussied: I've
got five pink weenies in the microwave
(he loves paw-long hot-men); I've licked
the floorboards spick, the chain-link span.
I've almost utterly forgotten
any other master (man:
the heaviest
of absentees, you do
the gorge-tattoo, the choke-a-throat. To you
we're Fidos or we're Rovers;
deep in mastery of mind there is
no other kind.) Thank Dog our star
is no cartoon--it's Sirius, not Pluto,
and the one I'm waiting for
won't call me by
my human name. He'll lift
a leg to the polestar, he'll
speak bone; he'll bow and
wow me, nose the moistened
meat. He knows the sweetest
senses of the shady. In the end,
because he cannot lie,
he'll switch me back to Bitch,
from Lady.