The dog in this poem sounds so much like my own dog Buddy that I just had to share this.
Introduction by Ted Kooser, U.S. Poet Laureate:
Dogs are smart enough to get people to take care of them, a skill that a
lot of people haven’t learned, but they’re still wild at the heart.
Paul S. Piper lives in Washington.
Dog and Snow
Dog sees white. Arctic
light, the bright buzz in the brain
of pure crystal adrenaline. In a flash
he is out the door and across the street
looking for snowshoe hares, caribou, cats.
His wild ancestry ignited, Dog plunges
his nose into snow up to his eyes. He sees
his dreams. Master yells from the front porch
but Dog can’t hear him. Dog hears nothing
except the roar of the wind across the tundra, the ancient
existential cry of wolves, pure, devastating, hungry.
Time for crunchies. Taking many detours, Dog
returns to the porch. Let master think what he
wants. Freedom comes at a price.
American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Poem copyright ©2011 by Paul S. Piper from his most recent book of poems, Dogs and Other Poems,
(Bird Dog Publishing, 2011). Poem reprinted by permission of Paul S.
Piper and the publisher.
Introduction copyright © 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The
introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate
Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do
not accept unsolicited manuscripts.
