Messages From Carrie

Raindog

May 10th, 2008

My dog is not torn, unsure or conflicted
By how to best spend this good day.
She will not spin her wheels.
She will not lay awake.
She will not wrestle with worry
For what should have been said
Or what should not have been done.
She will not be tugged at her boundaries or edges,
She will not be nagged by a bottomless feeling,
Of having squandered or missed anything at all.
My dog will run barking
Black nose in the air,
Beneath the high branches,
Where the blessed squirrel scurried,
And now sits scowling and scolding,
Making and unmaking,
Its tail into a question mark.
My dog is not concerned with planting or planning.
She does not dream of harvesting or heaping,
She knows a good bone is a good bone,
And it needs a good chewing,
And the chewing is most satisfying,
And that much is true.
Today my dog joined me
She click clicked and panted
Across the wide wooden planks of the porch
Grinning and waiting until she was closer
To shake the rain from her shaggy brown coat
For this sharing of water is a shameless symbol
of her wide and unbounded love.
Too many times I have scowled and scolded
Sent her away and went back to my work
But this is today
And I am sick and tired
Of all the planting and planning
Harvesting and heaping.
And so I walked out into the driveway
Smiled up at the sky
Which was still open and weeping
Like a woman delivered
While my dog danced around me
Droplets flying in all directions
Swinging my hair
And clapping my hands.

Carrie Newcomer May 2008