Weighing the Dog

Weighing the Dog by Billy Collins

It is awkward for me and bewildering for him
as I hold him in my arms in the small bathroom,
balancing our weight on the shaky blue scale,

but this is the way to weigh a dog and easier
than training him to sit obediently on one spot
with his tongue out, waiting for the cookie.

With pencil and paper I subtract my weight
from our total to find out the remainder that is his,
and I start to wonder if there is an analogy here.

It could not have to do with my leaving you
though I never figured out what you amounted to
until I subtracted myself from our combination.

You held me in your arms more than I held you
through all those awkward and bewildering months
and now we are both lost in strange and distant neighborhoods.

One thing I liked about this poem is how the author of it got straight to the point. He said, "and I start to wonder if there is an analogy here." He tries to get across the point that he is throwing in an analogy into this poem. He is very straight forward.

One thing I disliked about this poem is in the last stanza, how they separate to their different ways.

One thing that confused me about this was what the author was trying to portray through the dog. The dog symbolizes something, but I can't figure out exactly what he's talking about.

The main poetic device used in this poem is the use of symbols in figurative language. A symbol is something that expresses something greater that what it actually is. A symbol in this poem is the dog and the weighing of the dog. "It could not have to do with my leaving you though I never figured out what you amounted to until I subtracted myself from our combination." This quote is a good example that there could be greater meaning to the dog than