34-37 Degrees South: Easy reading version

Dog watch
Stephen Meyrick
An ordinary Sunday, overcast
but warm. Receding figures pick their way
along the beach, avoiding wrack from last
night’s storm. Bare-legged and squealing, children play
at the margin of the surf. Capricious waves
respond—a subtle game of test and tease.
The black-and-tan leaps for a ball—behaves,
as all dogs should, like beasts well-trained to please—
except, this time, it stops, well short, lays down
its prize and waits. A young man barks, reproves:
‘Here, boy!’, and slaps his thigh, and casts a frown.
But still, at last, it is the man that moves—
which proves the calculating canine mind
superior to the vaunted human kind.
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