I was already in a mood when my hound made her deposit beneath a juniper bush. Diligently. I bent to retrieve her leavings in a thin blue bag - I always keep a roll of her bags tucked into a plastic bone that conveniently attaches to the handle of her leash, so, when we walk, I am never without a bag or two.

It is difficult, sometimes, to collect everything, especially when it is nearly dark. Thankfully, I guess, it is never completely dark here in Boston. It is nearly dark, and it stays that way throughout the night in the city's violet perpetual dusk.

In my squatting position, with my arm carefully inserted to the hilt inside the bag, with my back crooked, with my whole body stooped, I raked out all the blood and guts from the vicinity of my hound's dirty goods from beneath the juniper bush. In addition to my hound's contribution, I also found another dog's contribution, and to that sad old loaf was attached a memo note. Most of the note was obscured by the mess to which its fate was tied; however, the signature was clear: "I AM THE DOG SHNICK POET."

A week earlier, I successfully defended my thesis before a committee of my mentors. Since then, I've been in a mood. I'm not sure what kind of mood I'm in, frankly. Sure, it has to do with endings and beginnings. And student loans. My mood is definitely affected by student loans.

So there I was, on my hands and knees and scooping out old dog work, nursing my strange mood, when I happen to find some verse from the self-styled "DOG SHNICK POET."

I was a little offended, at first. I was not favorably inclined toward the DSP. No - not at all. Instincts told me the DSP had composed his poetry as a protest against poo. Against poo? Is that the best you can do? Your protest against poo is a protest against me, too.

Against poo?
Is that the best you can do?
Your protest against poo
Is a protest against me, too.

Yes against me, too, because all dog owners in da hood be bringing the hound around. And even though I was there, knees in the earth, cleaning the mud, I was implicated by the protest verse of the DSP.

DSP: what do you know about writing? What do you know about protest? Nothing, that's all YOU know.

Then, of course, I started to empathize with the doggerel composer. I mean, who IS the DSP? Like myself, he must have bent down, squatted, rooted around in the dirt, found some poo, and attached his thoughts to the lowest common denominator before anonymously departing into the nearly-but-not-quite dark summer night. His triumphs are small. His goals are modest.

And his words were soiled. I wasn't going to wipe off the poo, and thus his words remained unread, though I suspect they had something to do with creamed corn.  So it goes.  My hound caught wind of an uncut Scottish terrier, and it was time to go.

Copyright ©2008 Joshua Suchman. All rights reserved.
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