Eight Puppies
The puppies opened their eyes. Suddenly they saw the world, anxious with terror and joy. They saw the belly of their mother, Saw the door of their house, saw a deluge of light, saw flowering azaleas. They saw more, they saw all, The red, the black, the ash.
Scrambling up, pawing and clawing More lively than squirrels. They saw the eyes of their mother, Heard my rasping cry and my laugh. And I wished I were born with them. Could it not be so another time? To leap from a clump of banana plantsOne morning of wonders— A dog, a coyote, a dear; To gaze with wide pupils, To run, to stop, to run, to fall, To whimper and whine and jump with joy, Riddled with the sun and with barking, A hallowed child of god, his secret, divine servant. The narrator starts off by telling us that thirteen to fifteen days after they were born, the puppies opened their eyes for the first time. For the first time, they saw the world and were filled with anxiousness and joy at all of the things around them. As they saw more, they began to be more active and lively.
The narrator wishes she was born with them, running free and worriless. At the beginning I think this poem literally means what it says, and there isn’t a deeper meaning. The author was probably just watching her new puppies and decided to write about it. In the second stanza she starts thinking more about their lives and how they act. In the third stanza she’s thinking about how innocent and free they are. She wants to live like that and not have a care in the world. She wants to be carefree and have fun with life.
