Snow Day

 

Bosco 2003-2014

Zacky, my spring-heeled dog, goes bouncing into the middle

of the flyers around the bird feeder--

his pure simple joy as he watches them rise.

his tongue hanging out, his eyes alight, defies the winter.

We have had snow, then thaw, then rain, then refreeze.

The world here is icebound.

The rain pooled almost to the doorstep, but the

still frozen ground could not accept it and iced over again.

The rinks have endured for two weeks now.

My dog comes to the door, exhilarated, certain

that his mama will be there to let him in for a cookie and a nap.

I am his open door, his open heart, his centering sun.

Someone I know has just lost her dog--

she is crying. I am crying for them.

Two to four more inches is expected here shortly,

while winter plays the immortal.

As I hold my smiling pal, I think of my old dogs,

Sundance and Bosco, and how much I miss them.

They passed.

Winter will pass.

I too will pass, along with all my stuff and memories.

Today I will sit stroking Zacky and watching out the window

as the snow falls and falls. 

Winter will have its day but will fade, as will 

presidents and peacocks,

blue jays and babies,

a constant falling, 

with all of us aboard for the ride.

(Detroit Michigan, 2/13/25)

_____________

Written for What's Going On? "Landscapes."

Music: Dave Grusin The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter theme

Freezing Rain On A February Evening

inside, the pages, outside, the ice

outside, the night, here sweet delight

inside the tale, outside rages

a frozen fall of rattling white

playing out on facing stages

outside, the ice, inside, the pages.

_______

a sparrowlet

with a nod to William Blake's

Auguries of Innocence

for Dverse MTB

hosted by Laura Bloomsbury

Music: The Doors

End of the Night

 

Pardon My Doggerel

 

I never met Gregory Corso

but his words were Gasoline

to the engine of my mind.

I did meet Allen Ginsberg once.

He signed the books

whose Howl had assuaged my loneliness. 

Here is a picture of the two of them,

another random human,

and a dog.

The tv is silent, cowed by the presence

of such vagabond intensity.

Corso shares a sandwich as if it were a chapbook.

Whitman said that not one animal is respectable.

Neither are poets, but they understand appetite

for food, for love, for being here now.

Come closer. I will shed a poem on you and make a mess,

then smile as if I had done something fine

to the engine of your mind

to assuage your loneliness.

I will do for you as these others have done for me,

off the leash and across the page

down through all the days of my life. 

_______

for What's Going On? "It's Raining cats & Dogs."

Music: Jennifer Warnes and Leonard Cohen Song of Bernadette

Word Garden Word List--Spill Simmer Falter Wither

 

Hello my little runaways! It's Monday again and time for this week's brand-new Word List.  This time our source is Sara Baume's superb novel Spill Simmer Falter Wither. It's about a solitary misfit and a one-eyed dog who run away from the unkind lives they've known and bond together on the road to... well, read it and find out. And the title? Think the four seasons. 

Sara Baume

"This book is like a flame in daylight, beautiful and unexpected." --Anne Enright, author of The Gathering. 

I have never read another book quite like this one. I suppose that The Plague Dogs by Richard Adams (also the author of the famous Watership Down) comes closest. It's unforgettable. I warn you, though, it will also break your heart. 

What we do here is to use at least 3 of the 20 words provided in a new original poem of our own. Then just link up, visit others, and then embark on a quest to find out once and for all who's a good boy. This prompt stays active through Sunday. 

And now, your List:

amok

armchair

baton

busybodies

cherished

child

countryside

delivery

euphoric

flowerboxes

freezing

lick

Perspex

reverse

running

sheep

sludge

stuffed

valerian

wildflowers

Seventeen

 The summer I was seventeen,

I read The Bell Jar

Howl

A Coney Island of the Mind

and Lost Weekend.

The neighbor's garden had

decorative bells

hung above the river stones.

Every tongued bell

is keen to find language

for (w)ringing out its pain.

_____

for dverse quadrille for whom the bell tolls

music: judy collins the bells of rhymney

Make Me An Instrument Of Thy Paws

the dog

ignores

the sign

that says

not to trot

in wet cement.

now,

his print 

is perfect

though his 

feet 

are funky.

poet!

i shout

at the magnificent

mutt.

_____

for day 2 of Play It Again.

"street poetry"

for day 11 of my 39 poems in 39 days.

The Troublesome Book

I am done with a book, but it is not done with me.
I go to the movies.
There is the book, hanging over the back of the seat in front.
"I was better," says the book, bitterly.
"But I am done with you," I tell it. 

I start a new book.
The old book falls off the shelf and knocks the new book aside.
"Motherfucker!" we say simultaneously.
I throw the old book into the fire,
but it just looks darker and more dangerous.

I enjoyed the book, at the time.
(The book and the clock got along famously.)
I took the book into my bed, into my heart.
But now I am done with the book and there are so many other books.
On this, the clock and I agree, which makes the book crazy.

I tell the book to forget me,
though, as is sometimes the case, I am unable to follow my own advice.
I will recommend the book to my friends.
I will review it favorably.
But the book is full of hate and wants to kill me and my new book, both.

After a few days, my new book becomes an old book also.
They join forces,
follow me down the street,
troll my place of employment,
spread lies about me.
I tell my troubles to the tv. It says, forget books, I love you, you're home.
_______

for Bits Of Inspiration at Toads.

My Dog

"Let me in!"

My dog
has short stubby legs
and a ginormous barrel chest.
People laugh and say,
"He's put together wrong!"
He likes to dig,
play tugga,
and once,
he killed a skunk.

Evenings, while I watch tv,
he snoozes with a big doggy smile on his face.
If I stop rubbing his belly,
he opens an eye, lifts a paw and wants more.
I like to watch him sleeping
with his little legs
and barrel chest,
all the while marveling
at his little body in its Perfection. 
______

For Day 9 of the April thang.

The Walnut Leaves, In Their Terror

The walnut leaves fall in groups,
In fear of
Zacky Peanut, who brooks no nonsense
And is ferocious (but fair.)

Into their bags they go,
Silent siblings to the sticks
Also lately fallen.

She who has a dog
Need never fear walnut leaves
For he is a Good Boi
And always at the ready.
_____

for Real Toads.

Trailer Park Gypsy

I'm a trailer park Gypsy.
I pay a fortune for the rent on my lot every month,
but it's just a sparrow flying through my head and out my mouth. 

At the communal mailbox, you'll see me.
I'm the hag with the horse blanket hair,
replying in Romany when you say good morning.

My trailer, in afternoon, 
is like the inside of a space capsule awaiting rescue at sea.
Helicopters bring in storms, report that conditions are bad
and what is an old Gypsy woman to them anyway? 

Knock on my door at dusk,
I'll answer holding a knife wet with chicken blood.
(Don't go so white, it's only a box mix.)

I was young once, with skin as dark as a stolen horse's flanks.
The city men, with voodoo wives screeching from their wallets
log-walked on the wheels of my wagon, on fire for my exciting scorn.

Now, televised baseball creates spring, and everybody's fortune is the same.
How I long for something else,
for the lever on my recliner to be a hatchet, 
for the goose on my cinder block steps to be an imp,

And for you to return from the dead, little hunchback.
I would like to be loved one last time,
here in the shadow of the church tower, where the bells sound like
women in the throes--

Where I might be denied entry, but you my deaf romancer?
Never you, because God loves a true heart
and I want to roam, reborn, in your reflected glory.
_______

My New Book !

Please check out my NEW volume of poems, titled "Catechism For A Girl On Fire." I think you'll like it, and you can get it HERE.

Nickel & Rose

I would go to Mass, if I could be alone there
to love the dim light, the flowers,
and place a nickel in the plate, when the nickel is all I have.

We hang on our crosses,
hang around after death,
hang our hopes on a rose stem that bends and vanishes.

Here is a rose.
Here is a coin.
Here I am, tiny in this vast space.

I would go to Mass, if you would come with me.
If you would whisper to me that's it's all true,
and does not die--
the dogs I've had, 
the women I've loved,
and the men, too.

"Peace be with you."
"And also with you."
I think,
peace is overrated;
give me a dream about a nun's kiss
and a sacred heart that stays, like a nickel in a rose bower.
_____

139 words (so sue me) for Magaly's "Dearest Book, I Wrote You A Poem."

The book I wrote for is Robert Girardi's novel "Madeleine's Ghost."

Image at top: Maud Feely, 1910.

Dustlips

Come over.
For dinner.
Here's a box and a bowl.
Something wrong with Rice Chex?

What I want,
what I'm in a fever for,
is that book.
Dja bring it?

Here I am,
ever the lady,
climbing you like a fire ladder.
Not kissing you--
I want the book.

Got it!
Go, now. 
Thanks.
Toodles.
______ 

for Flash 55 at Toads.

Doggerel In Dog Years

Old Mother Hubbard went to the cupboard
to do some emotional eating
because her heart may be famous but it isn't the same as
one loved face, and besides, fame is fleeting.

When she got there, the cupboard was bare,
as was her hope chest, her basement and her attic
because translations are poems whose language is frayed
and the local station only plays jingles and static.

Swing low, sweet Fido,
and give a girl a kiss when she needs one
because the ghosts don't care when she puts it all out there,
still she knows a friend in need when she sees one.

Four and twenty Milk Bones baked into a pie
and a pint of mint chocolate chip by silver spoon
cannot assuage the way a girl feels sometimes
but we can dream of running beneath a sweeter faster moon

through the kind of night where our love is coming home
under expansive easy stars and southern skies.
______

because I was missing someone.

image at top by Edward Gorey.  

We Snow What We'll Be Doing Today

Bosco and I met this morning, as we normally do, to consider activities and procedures for the day.

As investigative officer, I took a look out of my computer room window to get a read on the weather.

As border patrol chief, Bosco peed near the gate to warn off intruders. Snow removal supervisor Fireblossom had cleared his work area previously.

Educational chair Bosco suggests that we spend the day reading. I concur. This concludes the minutes of the meeting of the Planning Board.

Risking charges of workplace impropriety, Fireblossom sent the following memo to Bosco via inter-office mail: