Day Seventeen On April 17, 2022

“…here’s our daily (optional) prompt. This is a fun one – it’s a prompt developed by the comic artist Lynda Barry, and it asks you to think about dogs you have known, seen, or heard about, and then use them as a springboard into wherever they take you.”

****

Well, I’m mostly a cat person, so…but there is one dog, lives next door. Still a puppy, but the voice is well-developed by now.

No Life for a Sled Dog

Mornings, early, he’s let out

into the yard near my kitchen window.

Not much to amuse him: a water bowl, bricks,

planters filled with dirt to scratch in.

***

He whines. And whines. Then breaks into a howl:

the kind of sound you hear out in the woods

when there’s wolves about. He holds a note

like an opera star: high-pitched and sorrowful.

***

Dog’s too big, too full of energy for a townhome.

He ought to be out running, not tied up in a sparse

yard. Not held on a short leash when it’s walk time.

I feel sad to hear him sing his dog song.

***

Evenings, he accompanies the piano I can hear

through the living room wall. Sometimes the sound

rises to the bedroom, but faint, and I wonder what

the words might be if he had words to sing.

Carol A. Stephen

April 17, 2022

Catching up has been more challenging than I expected, with conflicting demands on my time, and recovering from the arm surgery. So, rather than stress and fret to match the daily prompts, I am going to use the occasional poem if I write one, outside that constraint.

Last night at a reading, someone mentioned thinking poetry was something written by dead white men. I sometimes have a quirky sense of humour, and it struck me that writing while, or after, you are dead, might be a rather unattainable goal. I mean, you’re dead, right? That led to this:

Dead Men Don’t Write

poems, or anything else, I suppose—

not about clouds, nor daffodils, nor

the slick silver fish that takes the bait

and flips off the hook, then flips his tail

and disappears below the river’s surface.

***

Dead men don’t write stories, though

there may be tales to tell about them,

rough and tumble tales, oh-my-gosh

that can’t be true stories, and ones

that go bump in the night.

***

Dead men don’t write memoirs,

yet their lives may have been filled

with adventure, fortune, perhaps fame.

Most just lie there, dead in their little plot,

the earth a dark cover above their last rest.

***

Dead men have lost any inclination,

any ability to hold a pen or tap a key.

Their stories have all unfolded, then

folded up again, a soft shroud around

their molder, there in the ground.

Carol A. Stephen

April 22, 2022