Category: Poems

I have a friend who, although considered quite sane in most other respects,
He the idea of a dog’s not having a soul immediately rejects;
His own family canine is indeed treated better than many children that I know of,
And on it is wasted good food, attention. praise, devotion, not to
even mention unrequited lo-ove.

Victory Gardens are a’ particular hobby of this particular beast’s,
And it worries him not at all whether the owner of the garden famines or feasts;

It runs at will (Will, the Mailman) to not even mention George, the Milkman, Jack, the Paper-boy, biting all and sundry,
But my friend says it is only because they torture and tease Babyface, or because papa’s-ittle-dawdie-is-hundry.

I:never argue with him about Baby-face, as my friend Jasper, if crossed about doge, gets angry, or at least peeved,
As, to him, a person’s thinking,a dog is not man’s Best Friend, if
not his father and mother, is just not to be believed.

People who think dogs are pests, he shouts at the top of his lungs,
Should remember how they are serving Uncle Sam ‘s Army in his hour of extreme urgency–
Stealing a side-long glance at Baby-face, I realize his best contribution
to the War Effort would be about 2½ quick bites to
a starving soldier in an emergency.

Not to love dogs. he says, is different from despising cats, rats, insects, or he-or-she-hares;
A Non-Dog-Lover is not only unpatriotic, unneighborly, and unChristian,
but incapable of loving his own children, he declares.

If you are caught in my friend’s house brushing the dog hairs off the seat of your pants,
You are immediately put down as One of Those People Who Don’t Like Dogs and if you so much as enter his place again, you are taking a chance;

For Baby-face, with that keen intuition attributed to dogs by all real Dog-Lovers, knows at once whether folks like him or not,
And proceeds to stage a one-dog riot, riot on the snot.

And, please, not a WORD to my friend concerning dogs and the Law:
For to him that Law-makers cannot be lovers of dogs which caper madly about imposing themselves on OTHER PEOPLE is the very last straw.

So, as one of the family, his dog sleeps in his bed, eats at his table, uses his toothbrush, and reads his books–
Or at least, from my friend’s remarks, that’s the way it looks.

And, says Jasper, the owner, Baby-face is, quite willing to sit by the hour listening with one cute little ear cocked to readings from Wordsworth, Keats, Sandburg, or Nash:
Just LOVES poetry, be it serious, silly, lousy, or pash.

And at a poem he particularly likes, his little face into a sort of rapturous smile he screws up– –
But if he does not approve, that ends it, for the entire tome he chews up.

So, due to all this, my friend parts and combs the hair of Baby-face the way Poets are supposed to–
( My–what an endless lot of trouble over that dog he goes to!)

And it seems to me that all this is quite enough to make the tail of a frog curl:
But I suppose the poetic part is at least plausible: I believe I neglected to mention the fact that Jasper’s is a little DOG-GIRREL!

by Ray Romine Wednesday, May 19, 1943