Poet Martha Carlson-Bradley, with whom I used to teach at Virginia Intermont College lo these many years ago, recently sent me a link to a lovely poem of hers, “At the Falls.” Enjoy.

This is a poem I wrote about my dog Carrie. As the poem describes, she adopted me in 1983 when I was teaching at Virginia Intermont College in Bristol, Virginia. I’ve revised the poem over the years, read it once or twice, and never considered publishing it. I don’t know how she died, but I feel totally responsible. I let her trot around the neighborhood on her own, something I would never dream of doing now. She didn’t come home. There were several cases of dogs picked up in the area for use in training fighting dogs. That was most likely her fate. So when I’m a little hard on God here, I’m not saying anything I haven’t said to myself—and worse. Not that I wouldn’t say it to Him too, if I believed. Without further confession or ado, the poem—

Like a dog

I watch with care
my dog moving across the yard.
She’s dead now, only a month,
resurrected by my memory—
the sideways drift of her hind legs
gaining on the front,
her eyes wide, expectant,
the soprano chatter of her greeting.

I took her in as a stray.
My students found her on a mountaintop
in a thunderstorm, her eyes wide with shock,
her tits gorged with milk and puss,
no sign of the pups
in the flashes of lightning.

They carried her down on a stretcher made from tent poles and a coat.
They cut the chain off her neck with boltcutters.
After three weeks of antibiotics, she rose from her bed
and inexplicably fell in step beside me.

She lived with me for eight years—
jittery when it rained,
cowering at the clink of chains,
good-hearted and gentle.
I often talked to her when we were alone.

I used to imagine her sufferings on that mountain.
Imagine I’d been her,
just as one might
imagine the sufferings of Christ,
to understand suffering.

I learned enough to marvel
at her ability to separate those
who’d chained her from those
who’d cut the chain.

Christ didn’t have to suffer.
gods don’t have to suffer.
They cause suffering.
Then ask for praise
or thanks
or bended knee
from the survivors.

Christ chained his own throat,
became a man to kill himself,
to pierce his own heart for a change,
to atone for his omnipotence.

Last night I knelt to pray
for the first time since my father died
ten years ago this February.
Then, I couldn’t say a damn thing.
Last night, I prayed to God—
“Thank you for dying,� I said.
“Now, I can imagine you
“alone in the wilderness,
“wind and rain and lightning all around,
“knowing soon you’d die like a dog—
“and maybe, just maybe, forgive you.�

     Donut

Dough
(in the shape of a zero
in the shape of a tail
in the mouth of a snake
in the belly of a whale)
Fried.

—D. H. Danvers

Song to Myself

Life it ain’t nothing but a dog upon a bone—
Something chewing something from a life that’s not its own,
What was left from someone’s dinner is now lying on the floor.
Do you think the dog ever wonders just what the man is for?

I need a break from you.
I need a break from you too.
I need a break from all of you.

I always thought this sadness was a disease for a younger man
The fellow racing rats, you know, the fellow with a plan,
Always looking over his shoulder and carrying a heavy load,
But when you get a little older, you start looking down the road.

I need a break from you.
I need a break from you too.
I need a break from all of you.

I found myself at sixteen and again at twenty-three.
I found myself so many times you’d think there’d be nothing left of me.
But I’ve still got a penny in my pocket and my head up in the clouds,
My mind in the gutter, and I’m inordinately proud.
So what have you got to say for yourself, you boring, useless sap.
I’m so tired of putting up with your boring useless crap.

I need a break from you.
I need a break from you too.
I need a break from all of you.

Life it ain’t nothing but a dog upon a bone—
Something chewing something from a life that’s not its own,
What was left from someone’s dinner is now lying on the floor.
Do you think the dog ever wonders just what the man is for?

One of my favorite writers in any genre is singer/songwriter Lucinda Williams.

She’s released another wonderful album entitled West. It’s a little uneven. “Come On” strikes me as a tad shrill, and a couple of songs sound too familiar, though familiar Lucinda is better than most writers’ cutting edge. There are many outstanding songs, the title track, “Words,” “Everything Has Changed.” “What If,” however, blows me away. The lyrics brilliantly demonstrate the whole range of What If literature—from satiric to apocalyptic to whimsical—in economical, powerful images. Wish I’d written it.

What If
—by Lucinda Williams

I shudder to think
What it would mean
If The President wore pink
If a prostitute was queen.

What would happen then?
How would the world change?
If thick became thin?
And the world was rearranged?

If the rains brought down the moon
And daylight was feared
And the sun rose too soon
And then just disappeared,

If dogs became kings
And the pope chewed gum
If hobos had wings
And God was a bum,

If houses became trees
And flowers turned to stone
And there were no families
And people lived alone,

If buildings started laughing
And windows cried
And feet started clapping
And out came inside,

If mountains fell in slivers
And the sky began to bleed
And blood filled up the rivers
And prisoners were freed,

If the stars fell apart
And the ocean dried up
And the world was one big heart
And decided to stop,

And children grew up happier
And they could run with the wolves
And they never felt trapped
Or hungry or unloved,

If cats walked on water
And birds had bank accounts
And we loved one another
In equal amounts.

I can’t remember
seventeen syllables if
they meant my whole life.

Parked in front of a
perfect square of green jell-o,
looking through the glass.

I hear the purr, feel
it in my palm gliding on
crackling fur, recall.

Over her shoulder,
past her sunlit chestnut hair,
the clock says, time’s up.

A bird thumps the plate
glass, falls into the flowers,
dead, blood and feathers.

No one notices
but me. Maybe it didn’t
really happen. Now.

Condensed rivulets
coursing inside the plate glass
soak the moldy drapes.

From a Dream in Freiberg

And the voice comes through old,
Injured, chronically healing from new wounds—
Saying “listen to me�
—but I don’t.

What if he asks questions I
Don’t want to answer, don’t want
To hear, old questions, new
Questions, questions nobody’s
even thought of yet.
He’s only got the one answer,
And I’m not ready to hear it.

“So how’ve you been?� I say.
“You’re not listening to me,� he says,
and he’s so right, so right,
so I write.

It’s only that I thought once you were dead
You had nothing further to say on any subject,
Even you, even me.

So I only remember the voice,
No words but “listen to me.�
I am. Believe me. That will have to do.

AM

In the panhandle of Texas
you can forget FM.
The world is flat here.
People stick Cadillacs
in the sand as an art joke.

Two o’clock in the AM
signals bounce off the ozone—
Chicago,  Nashville,  Del Rio:
A blizzard buries
the Grand Ole Opry,
but Jesus rises,
Saving and Healing
for Postage and Handling.

Four.  An accordion plays
polka and static.
Stopped, the desert is as huge
as the hiss of my piss
on the ground.
Had a friend once
on speed who saw
a 40 foot cowboy
striding toward him
down the highway,
over his car
and into his
rearview mirror.

Maybe it’s that cowboy
on the accordion,
his own broadcast tower.
Maybe it’s him
who can tell me
what in hell I’m doing here.
Maybe it’s him
who’s playing “Nola”
for all these stars.

—Dennis Danvers

THE POET TAKES ALL MORNING

The poet takes all morning to wake up sometimes—
Sometimes days—sometimes weeks.
The poet eats too fast and asks for seconds.
The poet doesn’t know what he’s on about
But he knows there’s a word for it.

The poet doesn’t care
If I make any money,
If I eat things that are bad for me.
The poet believes that anything
Worth doing badly is worth describing well.
The poet wishes we would move to Italy,
That Death was Beauty, and Beauty, Truth.

The poet wants to throw a party
And invite his dreams,
Then go home with someone else.
The poet believes in Blakes’s God and Milton’s Satan
But can’t sit still for the pew religion—
He doesn’t understand why the hymns have to be so bad,
Why the sermon is never interesting,
Why no one weeps at communion.
The poet falls in love with every woman he meets
And loses them because he falls in love with every woman he meets.
The poet lies awake all night
Watching the dying animal sleep.

I’m a novelist, I complain to him—
I don’t have time for these endless moments.
The poet says I need a break from the words marching all the way to the right margin and back again trying to make something happen, never just letting time stop to be here now.
Maybe, I say.

The poet takes all morning to wake up sometimes.
Sometimes he wakes up right away.
The poet laments there are more hours in the day
Than there are things to do them.
The poet rides in the backseat asking,
Are we there yet? Are we there yet?
And before you know it, of course we are.
—Dennis Danvers