St. Francis of 42nd Street

Troubadour turned beggar, a dapper king growling from your jeweled

throne as I enter your home. You turn your whiskered nose up

until I offer mice bites of cheese from the icebox.

 

You take them carefully from my fingertips with your tiny teeth,

then to show your love of all creatures great and small, you hump

your giraffe. Our pilgrimage begins, we step out amidst

 

the Poor Clares, you sniff gingerly. Slip and click, claws scrape

hallway linoleum as you scuttle from doormat to doormat. Sit

your silent protest of passive resistance at top of stairs - 

it worked for Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr., but you’re just ten

tough pounds of hair and teeth, a bat without wings, this city’s

great Rat Terrier, terrorist king. Jacob’s not the only one

 

who’s wrestling bigger things. I coax you downward, you resist

then relent, sensing my stubbornness more than your own.

On the streets you’re a bowling bail on a string, a yo-yo

 

getting caught on the scents of trees and your need to mark

everything, a urinary graffiti artist bombing the hell out

of Brooklyn, needing to be smelled and seen,

 

and then comes a Shepherd, a flock of other dogs, and you snap

from your cool collar upturned James Dean to the 42nd street

savage yelling and foaming. You may need to rethink

 

your recruitment strategy. I lift you up in your harness - suspended

you squirm a spider web worn and traveling. A flight of steps,

a plight of depths, stop dead in your tracks afraid of falling

 

upwards. It’s let go or be dragged, you’re rising, surprising yourself

with your own abilities, if only walking through fear was as easy

as being pulled up by someone who keeps believing.

 

(SusieDeFord; poet and writer, runs her own dog walking, training and pet sitting business, “Susie’s Pet Care”, in Brooklyn, N.Y.)

 

*****

 

Found in the magazine “DOGFANCY”, December 2010 issue, on the page “Share”.