Dogs of a Certain War

I don’t know why it is so easy to feel pity for a dog, pitiful skin plank starved bones, when children wait beside them on porches. Of these children I sometimes hardly take notice. The psychologists love to talk about this stuff and say things like, he is too shell-shocked and fatigued from the hurt of others that he must ignore what is too close to his own situation.

These dogs of a certain war, unpublished conflict too broad for evening news, are canaries in the mines of our age. I think maybe it is just easier to watch the canaries than the black faced miners suffocating beside me.

“And Caesar’s spirit, raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.”

-Shakespeare; from Julius Caesar