"Dog's Phylogeny" is about Tassel, a miniature poodle who used to live with us, stretched out on the thick-pile carpet in our then apartment in the Toronto Annex. She did indeed have a mouth that turned up at the corners as if she were perpetually smiling. Nowadays we know something (with much still to learn) about how the different layers of the brain have developed -- the reptiliian olfactory layer (close to smell and emotions) over which the various substrata of mammalian cortices have been built up -- much like the seven cities of Troy, each built on the ruins of the previous. And so I imagine a trip down through our archeological layers would take us humans in a couple of short steps to dogs and then, after a considerably longer journey, back into the primordial roots of our unconscious.
in a past life dog was a crocodile now she floats quiet, snout stretched along the carpet dreams of shallow Triassic waters estuarine minnows threading through her jaws sometimes from the side you see her subtle smile how it tuns up at the ends in a wry twist telltale sign of the crocodiliac other times breathing softly teeth just ajar conjuring some small mammal foolish to the water's edge her yawn, of course, unmistakable row upon row of reptilian dentals - at that dog snaps her jaw shut such things are hard to remember dreams sink to a blur water-logged she forgets most details only reeds along the Niger an ancient slump of river mud a limb a small wing splashing to get free How imperceptibly time flowed is it two hundred million years already? the hours obdurate as the round stones on the river bottom she'd swallow them when the urge came let them grind slowly inside her stomach today such gastroliths can't be found she does without still gulps her meat without chewing her lives have turned shorter now or the river quickened since those long half-centuries as Congo dwarf, as large black cayman Orinocan, gavial, siamensis great crocs of gold and gray and armour green their memories settling in her brain layers of silt building up how long since she clambered onto them ran with the carnivores on the grasslands grew fur howled at the tidal moon? the world moves on from ruling archosaur she falls to household pet recalls her antique prey from carpet-float and the birds! the small birds with meticulous beaks who used to clean her teeth bright orange and indigo, where have they gone? oh they had quick black eyes!..............................Copyright © Rod Anderson 1987
Published in Sky Falling Sunny Tomorrow,
Toronto: Wolsak & Wynn, 1989
Also published in Garden Varieties, Cormorant Books,
Toronto: The League of Canadian Poets, 1988