Poems from August

Every weekday morning for an hour, I descend to my basement workroom to read ten minutes of poetry by someone wonderful (lately, Derek Walcott) and then work to write a poem of my own. My dog Brandy settles into the poofy chair opposite me. Since July, I've managed to write two poems down there, adding them to my poetry blog First Verse.

By coincidence, the poem about Brandy was completed in the morning of the day she got out of the yard. (An intruder had forced the gate open while I was away.) Brandy survived 40 hours in the woods of a nearby subdivision before she found her way back home.

Accessible Poem (for Brandy)

I know my dog some day won't somersault.
For now, she stretches brandy-colored limbs
to the seat of a plush chair and hops to the center.
She kneads the cushion as if she's digging for bones;
her claws rake the linen zip-zip-zip.
She lowers her brandy face between her paws,
her body now a sleek black slope
from feathery tail to velvety upturned bat-ears.
Her eyes, glinting coffee black, find mine.
She yaps, as if to say, "Hey! Watch this!"
She tucks her chin beneath, flips belly up,
then kicks the air, and stops. Again, she kicks.
Breathing hard, she rolls to one side, at rest.
May she, by these lines, always be accessed.

Here's Brandy photographed by her professional dog sitters Diane and Renee.

On his birthdays, John Updike wrote sonnets to take stock of his inner and outer worlds. I emulated him on my birthday in July. But the form didn't fit the content; it needed something lighter, more like the rhyme-studded songs that Astaire made famous.

At 63

The neighbors up early might see Fred Astaire
by my kitchen sink tapping the spout to prepare
Mister Coffee. That set, he pirouettes
with plates he deals like cards, jetés
with kibble for the dog, then glides in the dark
to the deck where he stretches bird feed to its hook.

I pour the coffee and open my prayer book.
Later, the rounds of the market, the park,
the church, the Home to sing Mom Sinatra.
First, I read this morning mantra:
In You we move and have our being.
They think it's a lonely old dancer they're seeing.