TEMPORARY JOB
I rolled the little dog upon
her back,
Her limp, sedated body spread
to bare
Its vulnerable abdomen—
nipples
Never to be suckled—while her
head
Flopped over to one side, as
though a truck
Had slammed her hard against
a garbage can.
Upon the vet’s behest, I
shone the light
And put the shiny scalpel to
her flesh,
And sliced her down the
middle as he watched
His new assistant learn to
cut the tubes
And then remove the ovaries.
The scene
Was etched upon my mind
against my will;
And my revulsion drew back
from each stitch
That hid Man’s treachery from
Man’s best friend—
Or so Man thought.
The whole world
screamed at me
That I should get a job and
earn my keep;
For high school was behind me
at long last.
My father’s finger pointed at
the door—
So here I was, among the
working class.
The whole thing troubled me.
It seemed that I
Was violated somehow, like
that dog,
In being ripped untimely from
the womb
Of literature and music, and
cast out
Upon the streets of life
where such as he,
This false friend of the
animals, snipped tubes,
While boys like me were
shipped to Vietnam—
Another place of gelding and
betrayal.
I washed the kennels with a
mop and hose,
And fed the cats and dogs,
and picked up trash
About the parking lot. The
whole thing stank.
I couldn’t wait until I
turned eighteen,
So I could move to some
romantic town
And start to live a life of
Poetry.
I hardly knew myself at all.
Three days
Did not go by before I spoke
my mind,
And told the doctor that this
kind of work
Was not for me; I couldn’t
spay a dog—
It seemed against the nature
of the world.
I half expected he would yell
at me;
Instead he looked me sternly
in the eye,
And not without an envious
regard.
“You know,” he said, “although
you are too young
To realize what it means, not
everyone
Can say what you have said;
can stand and face
The world because of what he
thinks is right.
Of course, I don’t agree with
you, and yet
There are not many people I
have known
Whom I respect—and you are
one of them.”
He shook my hand; I stammered
disavowals.
“Goodbye,” he said sincerely,
“and good luck.”
Perplexed and grim, I stood
awhile outside
And waited for my father to
come by
And pick me up on his way
home from work.
I dreaded telling him; and
when I did,
He drove along in silent
thought, and seemed
To know me better than I knew
myself.
