This poem is about Tassel, our first dog, a miniature poodle, stretched out sleepily on the thick pile carpet in our then-apartment on Madison Avenue in Toronto. In the first, it is clear that the hierarchy begins with the dog and then descends through various orders of humans.

		From pile-high belly-float
		Tassel guards from the centre,
		chin point on petty paws,
		miniature poodle breaths
		undulant in white tundra permacurl
		harbouring the world's pole.

		We come and go on the periphery,
		horizon folk, barkless ornaments,
		decorous around her carpet-stretch,
		fringing her meat bowl and leaf-walks
		with dangle of tall legs
		right now hanging deadpan
		from the big quilted rest-box.

		Time to watch out it is then
		for flappery pat-hands that
		zoom down from no place,
		friendly but trickster eagles
		catching one's fur in the unready,
		But none come, at the wait-centre none come --
		and possibly it is we're stuck?

		Untousled, Tassel looks at us quizzically,
		triangle of nose and dark brown eyes
		equilateral with question;
		why's the circumference gone sudden wag-still?
		what's going round in our minds?
		do we have  minds?
		No matter --
		she forgives our absent-mindedness,
		One can love dumb things too.