Babybells: A Dog’s Eye View
© Tony Smith 1996

Smiling with tail and well fed jowls
The Labrador’s head rests on his paws
A day’s work done he rests content
Faintly amused by the night’s events

Tabled the baby gurgles and grins
As mother bends over feeling for pins
Kissing the tummy that now smells fresh
The miracle tiny with which she’s blessed

Puts on pilchers over the squirms
Wonders ‘are babies related to worms?’
Sits her up carefully talc in her grip
On octopus arms a jumper does slip

Holding her there she feels on the rack
And brushes the soft gold halo back
The ritual’s plain and well baby knows
Before too long her dinner milk flows

Then tinkling bells on soft thin straps
Her mother ties to an ankle so fat
For later when she learns to crawl
She must be found in kitchen or hall

And as she grows sounder in body and mind
The bells will make music – a sweet loving kind
Her image is perfect – her mother’s ideal
Occasionally dreams into daily life steal

The old dog wishes she’d turn on the light
But knows the dark has its own special sight
He loves this woman and child so well
And drools in his heart at the sound of the bell

A former academic, Tony Smith has written extensively on a wide range of subjects as diverse as folk music and foreign policy issues in the Australian Review of Public Affairs, the Journal of Australian Studies Review of Books, Overland, the Australian Quarterly, Eureka Street, Online Opinion and Unleashed.