For the Dogs

1. Walter

Sir Walter Dog was not the knight
we wanted him to be, and yet
he struck a pose on our front steps,
   perusing distant fields.

Nor was he quite the Scottish writer
we would have him answer to,
although I’d bet he had his own
   adventures to reveal.

He was a dog, we’ll give him that,
but nothing of the pedigree
some said he was —more terrier,
   less cocka, mostly poo.

But you’re one for the ages, Walter,
living on in memories
for more than thirty years, and we’re
   still calling out to you.


2. Leo

King Leopold of Vold once ruled
that portion of our Glyndon jungle
where the grass was not quite wild
   and the river didn’t reach.

We kept a chain around his golden
neck for his own good, we said,
but when he grumbled now and then
   we’d let him off the leash.

I want what Leo wanted then,
to have the lion’s share of life,
to run along the jungle’s edge,
   to chase what I desire.

But in a dog’s life, just a taste
of freedom turns into an urge
to hit the roads and try to bite
   the tires off of cars.


If anyone else is interested, please jump in.  We still have:

3. Duncan (he of the enlarged heart)

4. Blackie (was that his name, from the Greens?  And whatever happened to him?)

5.  Bruiser (talk about a good name story!)

6.  Thor (he who feared the thunder)

7.  Duffy (he of the running board (Kirsten's request))

8.  Blizzard (he of the balcony)

9.  Yoshi (yes, already done, but there's always room for another voice)

10.  Bronko (ditto - or even the same voice with a different look)

11. ...? (who am I forgetting?)

in the day's demand

I see my dog, stolid as a clam,

slumped in the day’s demand and

flat unconscious of his breed’s

statistics: a longer run of puppyhood

(three years, some say, to two); a

shorter span of livelihood—ten years,

I pray, to twelve. Along the way we

calculate the fetchings of a stick.

My dad had Walter, cockapoo,

who played a part in wild, unfurling

prayers. I was not there when

Walter died, but maybe thought of him

when, ten years later, dear Dad

did too, chipper than a clam, of course,

yet torn because his Godly house

was all asunder (politics) and his next

dog Homer, springer spaniel, had

run beneath a truck. I had witnessed

such when I was small, tracking

sugar beet rumbles along our gravel road:

Leo (the lion), our golden retriever,

felt duty-bound to chase those soirees

down. I’m sure the Children’s TV

Workshop played on sanguinely while

Leo literally coughed up his guts,

writhing in the brokenness of untold

bones. Now I see my dog, flat-coat

retriever, with nothing in my mind to

contravene. We have no trucks here

to track down; we wallow in our easy-going

town. We’ll live a dozen years or more,

depending on the sundry sticks we’ll fetch.

And, for you, lost Leo, Walter, poor

naked wretches, wheresoe’er you are:

we’ll live upon the promise of the

pelting of this pitiless storm, not more

potent than the heavens more just.

Dad loved King Lear. And, thus,

I’ll walk my dog in never-fledgling fear.

He has, of yet, no progeny. I have

such blessings I could never put to any

ledger. I’ll walk the dog for his sake

more than mine. He’ll walk and fetch to

satisfy a grander sense of time.

Isaiah's treasure

Circulating now, via internet,

the world is destined to be like

Venus: exquisite, contrapuntal,

very hot, unfit for life as we might

deem it in a billion years or so.

Science makes some sense, even

to the human-absent denouement:

a hundred quintillion years when

nothing feasibly could race away

from dying stars and Charybdis

holes we abbreviate as black.

We may view this from box seats,

or through a glass, darkly, or as

angels, gleaning and being gleaned

by grace and Word and faith alone

—facing the miasma, and falling

on our savior as foretold in Isaiah

forty-two: “Here is my servant,

whom I uphold, my chosen one in

whom I delight;…A bruised reed

he will not break, and a smolder-

ing wick he will not snuff out.”

My forty-seven years are about

apace to that of the human race,

between what Shakespeare says

is rounded by a sleep. I do believe

in angels—perhaps those who’ve

lived in other worlds to see what

sense and sentience we bind and

unfold here. I more believe in the

Lamb of God, who takes away the

sins of the world—we sing that

Agnes Dei to round out every day

and wake to a world that has more

than survived: it’s thrived, on whole,

teeming with unprecedented life

(some might say the walking dead)

that baby-bird-like long to feed

before they long to fly. We are such

stuff as dreams are made on—

from Eden’s clay to earth’s decay,

we are the reason all the atoms

act the way they do, insofar as reason

otherwise would nary have a clue.

I’m half-way through a life that

lives beyond my measure. I dream

of what exists—Isaiah’s treasure.

As Kirsten Turns Eighteen

Forward is the chance to see my
daughter and my son grow older.

Forward is the order of the seasons:
winter, spring and summer.

Forward wakes before the dawn, and
forward makes its way back home.

Forward sees the setting sun
and looks beyond.

----

Dawn gently breaks,
    not as a sudden thing:
the sun
    of a day’s ontogeny
        does not surprise,
nor does it sound
    a loud awakening
or slap
    the first breath out of me
or shine
    hard light accusingly
        into my naked eyes.
Dawn is the dark’s
    slow unraveling,
        the day’s revealing rise.

Time dawns on me:
I am inclined
    to set alarms at night
and run
    cold showers when I wake.
        I want to face the day
before it faces me.
    I need light
to put
    my clothes on properly,
but usually long
    before the break
        of dawn I’m on my way,
letting dawn
    distinguish those who work
        from those with time
            to play.

I am determined to beat the day,
though dawn,
    and in dawn’s easy pace,
is when
    and how I ought to rise,
        letting nature have its say
instead of doing
    it my own way, chasing
shadows
    to the next horizon,
courting ghosts
    of healthy, wealthy, wise
        to my dying day;
despite the dawn,
    I keep on facing
        life the other way.

But dawn keeps on
and on
    that day of final rest,
if I
    should wake before I die
        I pray the rising sun
will shake
    me from my sleepiness
and let
    me see the morning sky
wash over me
    once more before
        my daily dawns are done,
before
    my final east to west
        and the pull of a setting sun.

----

Forward is the chance to see my
daughter and my son grow older.

Forward is the order of the seasons:
winter, spring and summer.

Forward wakes before the dawn, and
forward makes its way back home.

Forward sees the setting sun
and looks beyond.

also posted on my daily blog, Poems by J.A. Vold

our kind of keep

Epiphany

Tři Králové

is alive today

whether braced

by polar vortex or

graced in Bohemian

balm, Magi still arrive

to focus their perusing

eyes where their camels

maps and heaven guide: a

baby in a feeding trough for

donkeys fast asleep, a mother

and a father keeping watch and

cradling what they’d long to keep

and swains inside to show the King

of David’s line will need their kind of

keep. The meager ware the Magi bring

hardly fits the scene:  the myrrh appalls,

the gold enthralls, the frankincense sheds

all the stable smell for a little while at least

but bothers not the native flock, which deign

to sleep through this epiphany. We are of that

flock—well before Gethsemane—if yet we stay

awake tonight. We’re practiced after all with the

ringing in of new years and vigils with our friends

who newly now assemble here, a life-sustaining sty.

And I would do it again, but set down

This set down

This:

Epiphany is alive because our Savior died

and we have nowhere else to look or be.