You little friend, your nose is ready; you sniff, <br />Asking for that expected walk, <br />(Your nostrils full of the happy rabbit-whiff) <br />And almost talk. <br /> <br />And so the moment becomes a moving force; <br />Coats glide down from their pegs in the humble dark; <br />The sticks grow live to the stride of their vagrant course. <br />You scamper the stairs, <br />Your body informed with the scent and the track and the mark <br />Of stoats and weasels, moles and badgers and hares. <br /> <br />We are going OUT. You know the pitch of the word, <br />Probing the tone of thought as it comes through fog <br />And reaches by devious means (half-smelt, half-heard) <br />The four-legged brain of a walk-ecstatic dog. <br /> <br />Out in the garden your head is already low. <br />(Can you smell the rose? Ah, no.) <br />But your limbs can draw <br />Life from the earth through the touch of your padded paw. <br /> <br />Now, sending a little look to us behind, <br />Who follow slowly the track of your lovely play, <br />You carry our bodies forward away from mind <br />Into the light and fun of your useless day. <br /> <br />* * * * * <br /> <br />Thus, for your walk, we took ourselves, and went <br />Out by the hedge and the tree to the open ground. <br />You ran, in delightful strata of wafted scent, <br />Over the hill without seeing the view; <br />Beauty is smell upon primitive smell to you: <br />To you, as to us, it is distant and rarely found. <br /> <br />Home ... and further joy will be surely there: <br />Supper waiting full of the taste of bone. <br />You throw up your nose again, and sniff, and stare <br />For the rapture known <br />Of the quick wild gorge of food and the still lie-down <br />While your people talk above you in the light <br />Of candles, and your dreams will merge and drown <br />Into the bed-delicious hours of night.<br /><br />Harold Monro<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/dog-15/
