Poetry Friday--"The Dogs in Dutch Paintings"

Jan van Eyke, "Portrait of Giovanni Arnolfini and His Wife," courtesy Web Gallery of Art.

The Dogs in Dutch Paintings
by David Graham

How shall I not love them, snoozing
right through the Annunciation? They inhabit
the outskirts of every importance, sprawl
dead center in each oblivious household.

They're digging at fleas or snapping at scraps,
Dozing with noble abandon while a boy
bells their tails. Often they present their rumps
in the foreground of some martyrdom.

What Christ could lean so unconcernedly
against a table leg, the feast above continuing?
Could the Virgin in her joy match this grace
as a hound sagely ponders an upturned turtle?

No scholar at his huge book will capture
my eye so well as the skinny haunches,
the frazzled tails and serene optimism
of the least of these mutts, curled

in the corners of the world's dazzlement.

Found in Seriously Funny: Poems about Love, Death, Religion, Art, Politics, Sex, and Everything Else edited by Barbara Hamby and David Kirby [811.6 SER]

How could you not like a poem about dogs and art? The common dog found in the painted scenes of great occasions, doing what dogs do best--snoozing, sprawling, snapping, and being totally unconcerned!

The Poetry Friday Round-Up is being held at A Teaching Life.