notes on ‘Idea of the Dog’

This is a true story about my wife. She noted one night, after sleeping poorly, that now she sometimes sleeps curled in a ball “even though I’m not sure the dogs are there; I don’t want to move because I might wake them up if they are there.”

I contemplated this for quite a while. My own policy is to kick the dog off the bed whenever he’s in my way. And even if he isn’t in my way, usually I’ll kick him out just on principle.

It seemed like an interesting idea, that it was not the dog in her way, but just the idea of the dog that was in her way.

One cardinal rule of poems is to boil it down to very direct and short statements; and not to ramble on. I broke that rule here. Sometimes it’s good to break a rule. Here it was just more fun to ramble a bit, and rhyme while doing it.