Diana Darby ** "I V" ** Intravenous

My Decorator

Last night
I came home
to find the den “redecorated”.
The plastic blind over the door had been yanked down
and half of it eaten.
Both the shades were hanging limply on the two other windows.
The rug was piled up into a ball in the corner of the room.
My papers and bills were strewn about the floor.
My favorite children’s book, “The Little Engine That Could”,
was ripped and the spine stripped.
Both cushions were off the chairs
and a pair of shoes and a rawhide bone were now resting in their place.
It was as if an insane person had come in,
ransacked the place,
and then left.
But this wasn’t the work of a person,
This was the work of a two-year-old lab/border collie I adopted.
He had been so submissive
and gentle for the last two weeks
that I didn’t see this coming.
I wanted to yell at him,
but I didn’t.
What good would it do?
He wouldn’t know what I was yelling about now
and it would probably just frighten him.
So I just stood there thinking “bad dog.”
I gave him a few dirty looks
and spent most of the night ignoring him.
But this morning when I woke up,
I thought
his work was rather ingenious,
almost Picasso like,
the way the shoes and bone were arranged
and the papers scattered.
It showed a great deal of attention to detail.
It got me wondering,
what could he do
with a set of finger paints?