The Lady and the Tramp by Bruce Guernsey : American Life in Poetry

The Poetry Foundation

Library of Congress

University of Nebraska
at Lincoln

American Life in Poetry: Column 139

BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE

Man’s best friend is, of course, woman’s best friend, too. The Illinois poet, Bruce Guernsey, offers us this snapshot of a mutually agreed upon dependency that leads to a domestic communion.

The Lady and the Tramp

As my mother’s memory dims

she’s losing her sense of smell

and can’t remember the toast

blackening the kitchen with smoke

or sniff how nasty the breath of the dog

that follows her yet from room to room,

unable, himself, to hear his own bark.

It’s thus they get around,

the wheezing old hound stone deaf

baying like a smoke alarm

for his amnesiac mistress whose back

from petting him is bent forever

as they shuffle towards the flaming toaster

and split the cindered crisp that’s left.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright © 2007 by Bruce Guernsey, whose newest book, “New England Primer,” published by Cherry Grove Collections (WordTech Communications) is due out in 2008. Poem reprinted from "Spoon River Poetry Review", Vol. XXVI, no. 2, by permission of the author. Introduction copyright © 2009 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

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