When the world feels uncertain, we always have dogs

BACK AT HOME I HAVE DOGS

The doctor, as rare as a unicorn, is protecting me from her disease.

I ask her to drop her mask for a second so I can see

What features will be moving beneath those disfiguring folds.

When she covers up again it is like watching her become mute

As her expressions vanish behind that pale blue screen. Outside

The sky clouds over, the leaves fall, and I could be talking to a wall.

Prescription-waiting I turn from the man with the cough,

Wondering if the two chairs between us are enough. And as I leave

I notice a screwed up tissue, possibly snot-filled by the absent owner,

Now occupying the centre of the floor, repelling all-comers as if it were

The coil of a poisonous snake, or a lump of excrement, or a hole into which

Children might vanish. Back at home I have dogs; one nimble,

Drip-dry husky, the other, an ageing version with a coat

As thick as a duvet and as absorbent as a gasping sponge.

In a sodden month he is constantly waterlogged; I cut and drag at his matts

In between bowls of homemade soup, thrashing rain and getting the boiler fixed.

While I cook for my turn to host the book club meeting for a book I read as I cook,

I stop chopping onions only to check emails and see

That today, in the USA, my magpie memoir, George,

Is on the Oprah Daily Best Memoirs list for 2023.