Wet things smell stronger,
and I suppose his main regret is that
he can sniff just one at a time.
In a frenzy of delight
he runs way up the sandy road—
scored by freshets after five days
of rain. Every pebble gleams, every leaf. 

When I whistle he halts abruptly
and steps in a circle,
swings his extravagant tail.
The he rolls and rubs his muzzle
in a particular place, while the drizzle
falls without cease, and Queen Anne’s lace
and Goldenrod bend low.

The top of the logging road stands open
and light. Another day, before
hunting starts, we’ll see how far it goes,
leaving word first at home.
The footing is ambiguous.

Soaked and muddy, the dog drops,
panting, and looks up with what amounts
to a grin. It’s so good to be uphill with him,
nicely winded, and looking down on the pond.

A sound commences in my left ear
like the sound of the sea in a shell;
a downward, vertiginous drag comes with it.
Time to head home. I wait
until we’re nearly out to the main road
to put him back on the leash, and he
—the designated optimist—
imagines to the end that he is free.

1942 📷

Interesting.

One of the benefits of gardening in the South. January 27: tomatoes are sprouting and onions are planted.

Eureka! I finally discovered a good use for whey left over from yogurt-making. Add it to the pot when cooking steel-cut oatmeal. Makes for a delicious tangy breakfast. (BTW, the soft-boiled egg and s.c. oatmeal combo is dynamite.) 🍳

Tragedy and Christianity are incommensurable,
he declared, which we’d have chalked to bluster
had he not, within the month, held a son
hot from the womb but cold to his kiss,
and over a coffin compact as a toolbox wept
in the wrecked unreachable way that most resist,
and that all of us, where we are most ourselves,
turn away from.
                              Bonded and islanded 
by the silence, we waited there,
desperate, with our own pains, to believe,
desperate, with our own pains, not to.