Dog Music

by Paul Zimmer

Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.

My big dog sang with me so purely,

puckering her ruffled lips into an O,

beginning with small, swallowing sounds

like Coltrane musing, then rising to power

and resonance, gulping air to continue—

her passion and sense of flawless form—

singing not with me, but for the art of dogs.

We joined in many fine songs—"Stardust,"

"Naima," "The Trout," "My Rosary," "Perdido."

She was a great master and died young,

leaving me with unrelieved grief,

her talents known to only a few.

Now I have a small dog who does not sing,

but listens with discernment, requiring

skill and spirit in my falsetto voice.

I sing her name and words of love

andante, con brio, vivace, adagio.

Sometimes she is so moved she turns

to place a paw across her snout,

closes her eyes, sighing like a girl

I held and danced with years ago.

But I am a pretender to dog music.

The true strains rise only from

the rich, red chambers of a canine heart,

these melodies best when the moon is up,

listeners and singers together or

apart, beyond friendship and anger,

far from any human imposter—

ballads of long nights lifting

to starlight, songs of bones, turds,

conquests, hunts, smells, rankings,

things settled long before our birth.

A Room in the Past

By Ted Kooser

It’s a kitchen. Its curtains fill
with a morning light so bright
you can’t see beyond its windows
into the afternoon. A kitchen
falling through time with its things
in their places, the dishes jingling
up in the cupboard, the bucket
of drinking water rippled as if
a truck had just gone past, but that truck
was thirty years. No one’s at home
in this room. Its counter is wiped,
and the dishrag hangs from its nail,
a dry leaf. In housedresses of mist,
blue aprons of rain, my grandmother
moved through this life like a ghost,
and when she had finished her years,
she put them all back in their places
and wiped out the sink, turning her back
on the rest of us, forever.

Carlos

by Theodore Deppe

My first day leading the prison writing workshop: Carlos

complimented my choosing the chair nearest the door.

I read a poem by Whitman that once sent me hitchhiking

and Carlos stood up, asked to read a section from his four hundred-page work-in-progress,

a poem that turns on his first finding Neruda's "One Year Walk";

he said it lit up the night like a perfect crime, so I left everything—

I had no choice—walked three thousand miles to the Pacific.

From memory he recited a passage in which his father left the family

a small fortune, all counterfeit: though I doubted the facts, I can still see

that worn briefcase, almost-perfect hundreds stacked neatly in shrink-wrapped packs.

I was young, it took me two weeks to accept that I could teach this lifer

nothing. World of concrete floors and everlasting light:

he was grateful to God who gave him a blazing mind not granted to anyone living or dead,

and wouldn't have changed a word anyway.

Everything We Do

by Peter Meinke

Everything we do is for our first loves
whom we have lost irrevocably
who have married insurance salesmen
and moved to Topeka
and never think of us at all.

We fly planes & design buildings
and write poems
that all say Sally I love you
I'll never love anyone else
Why didn't you know I was going to be a poet?

The walks to school, the kisses in the snow
gather as we dream backwards, sweetness with age:
our legs are young again, our voices
strong and happy, we're not afraid.
We don't know enough to be afraid.

And now
we hold (hidden, hopeless) the hope
that some day
she may fly in our plane
enter our building read our poem

And that night, deep in her dream,
Sally, far in darkness, in Topeka,
with the salesman lying beside her,
will cry out
our unfamiliar name.

Another Insane Devotion

By Gerald Stern

This was gruesome—fighting over a ham sandwich
with one of the tiny cats of Rome, he leaped
on my arm and half hung on to the food and half
hung on my shirt and coat. I tore it apart
and let him have his portion, I think I lifted him
down, sandwich and all, on the sidewalk and sat
with my own sandwich beside him, maybe I petted
his bony head and felt him shiver. I have
told this story over and over; some things
root in the mind; his boldness, of course, was frightening
and unexpected—his stubbornness—though hunger
drove him mad. It was the breaking of boundaries,
the sudden invasion, but not only that, it was
the sharing of food and the sharing of space; he didn’t
run into an alley or into a cellar,
he sat beside me, eating, and I didn’t run
into a trattoria, say, shaking,
with food on my lips and blood on my cheek, sobbing;
but not only that, I had gone there to eat
and wait for someone. I had maybe an hour
before she would come and I was full of hope
and excitement. I have resisted for years
interpreting this, but now I think I was given
a clue, or I was giving myself a clue,
across the street from the glass sandwich shop.
That was my last night with her, the next day
I would leave on the train for Paris and she would
meet her husband. Thirty-five years ago
I ate my sandwich and moaned in her arms, we were
dying together; we never met again
although she was pregnant when I left her—I have
a daughter or son somewhere, darling grandchildren
in Norwich, Connecticut, or Canton, Ohio.
Every five years I think about her again
and plan on looking her up. The last time
I was sitting in New Brunswick, New Jersey,
and heard that her husband was teaching at Princeton,
if she was still married, or still alive, and tried
calling. I went that far. We lived
in Florence and Rome. We rowed in the bay of Naples
and floated, naked, on the boards. I started
to think of her again today. I still
am horrified by that cat’s hunger. I still
am puzzled by the connection. This is another
insane devotion, there must be hundreds, although
it isn’t just that, there is no pain, and the thought
is fleeting and sweet. I think it’s my own dumb boyhood,
walking around with Slavic cheeks and burning
stupid eyes. I think I gave the cat
half of my sandwich to buy my life, I think
I broke it in half as a decent sacrifice.
It was this I bought, the red coleus,
the split rocking chair, the silk lampshade.
Happiness. I watched him with pleasure.
I bought memory. I could have lost it.
How crazy it sounds. His face twisted with cunning.
The wind blowing through his hair. His jaws working.

The River at Wolf

By Jean Valentine

Coming east we left the animals
pelican beaver osprey muskrat and snake
their hair and skin and feathers
their eyes in the dark: red and green.
Your finger drawing my mouth.

Blessed are they who remember
that what they now have they once longed for.

A day a year ago last summer
God filled me with himself, like gold, inside,
deeper inside than marrow.

This close to God this close to you:
walking into the river at Wolf with
the animals. The snake’s
green skin, lit from inside. Our second life.

Fishing

by Kate Scott

Sam was a galunky kind of guy,
my cousin says. He walked like this.
He takes on a bow-legged swagger
that makes us laugh. And boy,
could he drink beer. He lifts his hand,
tipping imaginary cans in quick succession.
He talked real fast too. Back then we laughed,
asked what was the rush? Never slowed him any.
Girls loved him. He was such a big guy,
think they figured he must have a big heart.

My cousin slows a little in his walk,
tugs on his ear to remember more.

We hung out a lot and unless he was excited,
talking fast, he was real quiet, would just sit,
stare out to space like he was someplace else.
Maybe he was thinking about the girl he loved
who died one winter, fell through the ice
as she was skating towards him.
She was only twenty feet away, her arms out wide.
They say he was there all night,
smashed the ice in a hundred places to find her.
They pulled her out in the Spring.
I think when he talked so fast
he was trying to forget,
like the words would fill up the space she left.

My cousin stops in the road,
brushes imaginary hair from his eyes.

I lost touch for some time, years went by.
I didn't hear from Sam, neither of us
were much use at letter writing.
Then one summer I came home to visit,
bumped right into him in a store downtown.
He talked real slow, like he was a clock
that had wound down. He said he'd taken up fishing.
He said he didn't much care for fish
but when he flung the line out hard,
heard the whir as it spun out over the water,
saw the river winking and glinting at him,
he felt he could catch anything.