Unmediated Experience
BY: BOB HICOK
Bob's poem describes the decaying and saddening relationship between an owner (presumably him) and his dog. The readers are first introduced to his seventeen year old dog who is "mostly deaf", "mostly dead", and has a tendency to do "this thing." The owner explains "this thing" by recalling all the times he would call the dog and the dog would not listen or would obliviously walk away in another direction. The dog would "walk towards the nothing of speech", and would even "[trot] down the the drive, ears up, as if [his] voice [was] coming home." Obviously, this dog has aged and has lost much of his senses, and the imagery of the old and worn dog no longer able to voluntarily obey his owner, creates a mood of lost hope and discouragement.
Twice, the author places references of Christmas and Santa in the poem. He describes the owner experiencing the moment of watching his sick dog like "a child [believing] in Christmas, right before you burn the tree down." The owner must feel excruciating pain as he watches his withering dog fail to respond to his calls, yet every time he calls the dog, he hopes and "thinks, this time she'll turn to me", "this time she'll put voice to face", and "this time, [he'll] be absolved of decay." And this saddening frustration is also described as "being a child who believes in Christmas" but this time "as the tree burns as the drapes catch, Santa [will] light] a smoke with his blowtorch and [ask], want one?" These references of extreme childhood disappointments infers a much more painful reality in which his ailing dog will probably never heal or regain her old self.
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