Walking the Dog III

The saga continues and concludes (?).  (With, perhaps, one stanza too many.)

                                                             Walking the Dog III


                                       If my wife is right, who started the conversation?
                                      Was it some prehistoric proto-pup who left his mark
                                      when this suburban street was a Neolithic hunting
                                      trail of peers, when dog and master were newly met?

                                     And when will the conversation end, if ever?
                                     With some mutant mongrel staggering through
                                     a nuclear wasteland and emptying his glowing
                                     bladder one last time before he dies?

                                     Or will it wait until the ocean comes again
                                     and we are all left to dog paddle our way
                                     to some new and too distant shore?

                                    Perhaps, though, thousands of years from now
                                    a man and his dog will walk this same path,
                                    in whatever shape it’s taken by then,
                                   and the man will think these same thoughts,
                                   vaguely sensing they’ve been thought before
                                   and left the mark we humans leave each other.

Walking the Dog II

Here's a slightly lighter poem.


                                                        Walking the Dog II


                                        My wife informs me I am mistaken;
                                        our dog is not marking her territory
                                        when she pees. Instead, she is entering
                                        into a liquid conversation- “a time-delayed
                                        meet and greet” – with other dogs, past and
                                        future, who pass this way and piss this way
                                        before and after ours has pissed and passed.
                                        This is not instantaneous text messaging
                                        but a sort of leisurely canine committee
                                        of correspondence, a conference call
                                        in non-real time. But the basic message
                                        is the same as it has always been
                                        from the caveman through Kilroy:
                                        I was here. Were you here, too?