Man’s Best Friend.
A phrase oft repeated, perhaps too repeated,
now resigned to tired cliché.
But inside cliché, past the banality,
in the depths of its core,
we find central truths
common enough to the human experience
to bare the weight of their repetition.
“Blue as the sky” or “white as snow”;
expressions dulled by overuse
but just as obvious and genuine
as the day they were coined.
Then perhaps one such central truth can be found in
Man’s Best Friend?
If Man’s Best Friend is indeed a cliché,
it is through the countless lives of humans
entwined with those of dogs,
so pervasively through our collective existence
that the phrase itself has been etched in our minds,
ready to be recalled at a moment’s notice,
its central truth so evident
that no explanation is needed
when someone says
Man’s Best Friend.
I cannot speak for the throngs of the living,
and am ill equipped to commune with those long passed;
I cannot see all the souls
who have been touched by
Man’s Best Friend.
But I can say one thing
with absolute certainty;
my dog is
My Best Friend,
and no cliché can mask that truth.
