A Poem Is a Dog
Clarissa McFairy, aka Clare van der Gaast, is a Cape Town journalist whose hobbies are writing short stories and French poetry. She doesn't blog, but she does post work at her Facebook page, where she lets her imagination take wing. Her favorite spot to hang out is The Rupert Brooke Group where her chance remark about a poem needing to be walked like a dog set this poem in motion, pawing at the door, keening to go. She has dedicated it to the memory of her mini Schnauzer Simba, he of the balletic paws and flying leaps, who was pure poetry in motion. Clarissa's work has appeared at the prompts page and in the first prompts anthology, Inspirations: images & words.
A Poem Is a Dog
(In memory of Simba)
By Clarissa McFairy
Would "Ode to a Nightingale" have been heard
If Keats had been a computer nerd
Could such winged words have taken flight
In a digital world of artificial light
A poem is a dog that needs to be walked,
and then, unleashed,
To bound over meadow or field
or along a beach
Poems need to dither and dream,
Ramble along a stream
Sniff a bush of inspiration here
Cock a leg of contemplation there
Chase a squirrel of a thought
Leap into the air and peer up trees
Sniff old poems that have dallied there
and left their fragrance in the air
And finally, with lolling tongue,
The dog is on its way home
to a juicy new bone ...
A woof-worthy poem!
Posted by Annmarie at 6/17/2010 11:12 PM 
Categories: today's words
Tags: dog poem explore Clarissa McFairy free run walk
Categories: today's words
Tags: dog poem explore Clarissa McFairy free run walk
Woof. Love it.
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I found poem and pup precious this morning.
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I love this. Especially "Sniff old poems that have dallied there / and left their fragrance in the air."
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Thank you Sarah. It seemed as though Simba wrote that part. He probably did bec he looked so ecstatic when sniffing trees in the park. They all do, don't they? What a cocktail of fragrances each tree must hold. I suppose poetry is like one big park with lots of trees one can sniff.
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