Don McKay’s furry (not feathered) friends
While we’re on the subject of Don McKay, I would be doing a disservice not to post some of his poetry. McKay is known for his bird poems (and potentially responsible for elevating birds to cliche status in literary magazine submissions). If you’ve read any of his poetry, you have probably seen at least a few of them.
I’m not going to post a bird poem. Instead, I will follow the lead of someone I met recently who loved McKay’s poems about dogs. I find this fitting since I met first met Don McKay at a professor’s house, tirelessly throwing a spittle-soggy rubber ball for said professor’s terrier. Perhaps “good poetry” isn’t supposed to make you go “Awwww,” but this good poem certainly has that effect on me.
LUKE & CO
1.
Shriek of brakes spiked
with your spirit splits the evening suddenly
this is it everything leaks we draw heavy
outlines trying to keep stone stone
boot boot shovel shovel
shovel this raw mouth into the earth
and feed you to the meadow.
2.
Each time he settled on his blue-black sofa Luke
went out, invisible except for small white patches
on his chest, left forepaw, and the tiny paintbrush
tufts on his tail and prick-sack, winking when he
wagged or recomposed his curl:
milkweed
growing on this wild unspecial
patch of ground
let your silk slip
gently to the wind.
3.
A dog on his sofa, a dog
underground, a committee of dogs which
circulates beyond the bounds of decency
sniffing crotches
raiding garbage
stealing from the butcher
begging from the banker
befriending nasty Mrs. Kuhn, convincing folk
that every act is sexual and droll.
Raggedly
they range the meadow,
alternate hosts for all our seminal ideas
(soft sell, the revolving
door, the interminable
joke) tucked in snug cocoons behind their wise
unknowing eyes:
underground
they spread contagiously, freelancing dreamlife to
dreamlife through networks of long rambling after-
dinner anecdotes Mr. Glover had an old blind
terrier could fetch a ball by listening to it hit
and roll, I don’t know, could be he smelt it in
the air sure well Luke followed his nose the
way Ezekiel followed God, he’d vacuum up your
trail like you had fishline paying out your arse
you’d double back it didn’t matter he would find
you up a tree thing is, like they only partly
live in this dimension since they smell and hear
things that do not exist for us so on their level
it’s like synesthesia is common sense well, you
know Alice Dragland had such ears folks said her
mother was part fruit bat she would practise
flying when the family was asleep and when she
swam (for miles) behind the boat she mostly sailed
and then of course there’s breakthroughs
as when Luke
discovered down-filled pillows and extrapolated,
grazing the surface of soft
improbable objects with exquisite
fish-bites, chien stupide, chien
brillant, trying to tease feathers
from the cat the sofa and at least one
English professor of each rank and gender,
chien comme une tasse de la nuit, he wouldn’t
let himself become embossed with discipline
but played it like melody
(Perdido Blues) from which he improvised in long
irregular loops
exits
entries. Letting him out in out to chase a
car bike jogger snowplow (caught, tossed in an
otter’s arc of snow) rabbit motorcycle train the wind
whose speed
was with him even in repose a space
left in his doggieness for metamorphosis and style
where once
right here in this kitchen, Luke ate
three-fifths of Hemingway’s For Whom
the Bell Tolls, fell asleep on his sofa
wrapped in the perfect fur sleeping bag of himself.
(from Camber, p. 100-04)
