Ellen Kirvin Dudis

 

We all—from fear of a dark which denies
sympathy to a blind person’s first
presence in our eyes—
feel for the dog. It is unrehearsed.

He sinks to the wet subway floor, in pools
where the points of streaming umbrellas
have given up duels
with the rain. A speaker will tell us

the next stop to look for, such prophecy
isn’t his job; so his damp bulk stays
at his master’s feet
like a bathmat till a sharp pull says

“now,” and the big golden retriever rises
and leaves our gazes probing behind
their fatuous brightness
to prove what we see in the dog, blind

to the man, also is love (if a sort
of excuse, one so immediate
that all eyes escort
the dear dog without his seeing it.)

 

Ellen Kirvin Dudis’ poems have appeared in Smartish Pace, The Nation, The Baltimore Sun, Cream City Review, Off the Coast and elsewhere. She was born in 1942 in Brooklyn Heights, NY, and graduated from Middlebury College, after which she pursued a career in advertising in New York City. For much of her life, she lived with her husband in a farmhouse in Maryland, raising her children, tending to the evergreen nursery, and writing poetry. She died in 2012.