Dawn Wood: Comparison of a Black Labrador with a Sikka Deer Skull

Nose to nose –
indeed, they both seem almost all nose –
those quill curl passageways
wondering back to a plump brain-place;

I shuggled the deer skull
by its sugar-cone tines and he startled
as if those slack teeth could still function.

That week I walked the dog, I thought
he is like the nightmare baby in the attic
that you have forgotten to feed

but he forgives you
in a clumsy pirouette of himself
when you fetch his lead

he has no problem in being too literal,
literal is all he is
meandering the line between skull plates
carrying a ridiculous stick home in his mouth.


Published 2005. Wood is a Irish-Scottish poet with that musical Northern Irish (and maybe Scottish-inflected?) accent that gives the reciter a head start when reading poetry aloud. There are several videos of her reading on the net, but not of this poem. The persona she adopts here, of a dog tolerator rather than a dog lover, seems an intentional distancing mechanism and I wonder what lies behind it.