Wilbur Menzer Has His Say
Day 2 of streak
Photo by Milad Moqtaderi on Unsplash
This is Emily Writes Back, for brilliant people, by Emily Sanders Hopkins.
Good morning, dears!
Recap: I’ve pledged, as part of a fundraiser for Hospicare, to write and publish something for you every day until August 9.
Yesterday’s poem was about a blackbird who goes on a radio show called How Now, Brown Cow? and tells about his life, namely what he can see when he is flying. Mentioned in that poem was Wilbur Menzer, a dog. Today’s poem is about him.
Wilbur Menzer Has His Say Dogs did not evolve to live with people who have TV or phones and jobs. Dogs did not wait all this time to eat a piece of kibble-- baked extrusion of slaughterhouse slurry, tortured cows. We did not wait at the edges of the fire for scraps all those years for this. Over millennia, our faces did not become slowly cuter to please an ass who leaves at eight. The great-great-greats of wolves loping over tundra, over land, and in the forests dark, we dogs have in our DNA the map of your descent. "You killed and raped back then, true," I tell them, "but not by proxy, not from the sky, remote. Not by accident." Am I free to go? That is our main concern. Are we free to roam the suburbs? To trot up steps into the bus? And then, are we free to go farther still, outside of town where cars die down and pulses slow? To chase a rabbit or roll in dung or carrion, lap a creek, root out ducks, find a mate? May we cross a border like the world is ours? Run in packs? (Your highway rest stops do not cut it.) We wish all of this for you as well! To know that you are free to go or come. Eventually, your physiology may slowly alter to stay on pace with us. Longer legs to run for miles, stronger hands, bigger lungs, far sight, high whistles. I tell my owners this: "Anywhere can be a home-- a road, a copse, a cave, a cliff, you keep your home inside you. When you evolve some more, wars and phones will be a shame, an embarrassment of riches," but it sounds to them like "Woof."
It does make me think of a decades long argument that I, a country bumpkin, have maintained with my cousin, a Chicagoan, about how dogs would wear pants. He claims that ultimately the pants would go on all four legs up to their shoulders and hips in order to keep their legs clean from puddles and street detritus. I claim that they would only go on the back two legs--with a hole for the tail--up to their midriff, so that they would be comfortable driving the tractor. Indeed, a city dog and a country dog live very different lives. Thank you for these beautiful, fun, and profound poems. I can't wait for more!