Katherine Pierpoint: Jake the Blind Dog

Jake the blind dog's lived
For his own forever in this farmhouse.
He creeps across the kitchen floor on the diagonal,
Reeling himself in along a dotted line of voices,
His blank eyes useless, over-bright
But still trained on the sound of his people.
He moves one leg at a time like a puppet dog, concentrating,
Getting mixed up in the rungs of chairs,
To stand in front of the open fridge
Side by side with the woman,
Both framed in its indifferent, pearly yawn;
Both smelling thoughtfully, considering different menus.
Steady ox and ass, unpuzzled at their radiant manger,
She gazing in, Jake dimly aware of light and
Not gazing, but thinking of gazing,
Down the twisted skein of smell to the bowl at the source.
Standing stiffly upright, peg-legs under thin shoulders,
He listens, content to be held there in the voice.
His balls are the last two nutmegs on a winter tree,
Wooden mushrooms turned in the heel of a thin black sock.
She – not bending, exactly – but roundly inclined forward
Largely from the hip, a soft-boiled egg aslant in the cup;
Talking to him, serving as his eyes and language,
Arms out over him
In the wide curve of hovering, skating, blessing,
Right hand up on the fridge door, left hand resting on the top.
Their figures linked in a dream of food;
Ringed wooden posts, held by the soft swag of the hammock.


From Truffle Beds (1995). Is it because we look (down) on dogs as faithful servants that it seems much harder to write an unsentimental dog poem than an unsentimental cat poem? This poem paints its picture very cleanly with no overt pathos, but I'm not sure in the end that the image of dog and woman at the fridge carries the transcendence that perhaps the poet intended. What makes the poem remarkable is the utter equality between human and dog, even a disabled dog.