Gratitude: December 11, 2025

The Following Dogs

There are dogs who will follow you 
perpetually and as gladly 
as if it were their purpose in life, 
at least while in the act of following you. 

Other dogs enjoy being followed. 
They sniff around, look back, then run ahead. 

W. B. Yeats, so monumentally heartsick, 
spent his boyhood summers 
following a black dog and a white dog 
around the hilly Irish countryside, 
as if that were the purpose of his life, 
which it might have been at the time. 

Clearly, there are worse practices 
than spending your time following a dog 
whichever way she may roam 
into the woods or across a stream. 

How would it be possible 
to slap a child or smuggle arms 
to a band of wrathful guerrillas 
if you’re busy keeping up with a dog? 

So, instead of following your bliss, 
follow around some lighthearted dog. 

Surely, it’s better than doing nothing, 
if anything were better than doing nothing, 

which, setting dogs aside for now, 
is said to be the best thing one can do 
or not do, but in a positive way, forever, amen.

As Time Goes By

Like the dog who forgot 
where he buried his bone 

the old farmer forgot 
where he buried the dog.

Trying to Write a Dog Poem in a House with Two Cats

From a couch 

littered with throw pillows 

they are staring at me 
and my open notebook, 

and even though their tails 
are not twitching 

and their secret inboard 
motors are not audible, 

I know they are assuming 
in unison 

that I am writing 
yet another dog poem 

rather than one about 
the two of them,

but as you can see, 
they are actually 

featured here, 
an irony which is all 

I have to compete 
with their ceaseless gaze.

Billy Collins

Gratitude: December 10, 2025

The Revenant

Billy Collins

I am the dog you put to sleep,

as you like to call the needle of oblivion,

come back to tell you this simple thing:

I never liked you.

When I licked your face,

I thought of biting off your nose.

When I watched you toweling yourself dry,

I wanted to leap and unman you with a snap.

I resented the way you moved,

your lack of animal grace,

the way you would sit in a chair to eat,

a napkin on your lap, knife in your hand.

I would have run away, 

but I was too weak, a trick you taught me

while I was learning to sit and heel,

and--greatest of insults--shake hands without a hand.

I admit the sight of the leash

would excite me

but only because it meant I was about 

to smell things you had never touched.

You do not want to believe this,

but I have no reason to lie.

I hated the car, the rubber toys,

disliked your friends and, worse, your relatives.

The jingling of my tags drove me mad.

You always scratched me in the wrong place.

All I ever wanted from you

was food and fresh water in my metal bowls.

While you slept, I watched you breathe

as the moon rose in the sky.

It took all of my strength

not to raise my head and howl.

Now I am free of the collar,

the yellow raincoat, monogrammed sweater,

the absurdity of your lawn,

and that is all you need to know about this place

except what you already supposed

and are glad it did not happen sooner-- 

that everyone here can read and write,

the dogs in poetry, the cats and all the others in prose.

My Dog Practices Geometry

Cathryn Essenger

I do not understand the poets who tell me 

that I should not personify. Every morning 

the willow auditions for a new role 

outside my bedroom window—today she is 

Clytemnestra; yesterday a Southern Belle, 

lost in her own melodrama, sinking on her skirts. 

Nor do I like the mathematicians who tell me 

I cannot say, "The zinnias are counting on their 

fingers," or "The dog is practicing her geometry," 

even though every day I watch her using 

the yard's big maple as the apex of a triangle 

from which she bisects the circumference 

of the lawn until she finds the place where 

the rabbit has escaped, or the squirrel upped 

the ante by climbing into a new Euclidian plane. 

She stumbles across the lawn, eyes pulling 

her feet along, gaze fixed on a rodent working 

the maze of the oak as if it were his own invention, 

her feet tangling in the roots of trees, and tripping, 

yes, even over themselves, until I go out to assist, 

by pointing at the squirrel, and repeating, "There! 

There!" But instead of following my outstretched 

arm to the crown of the tree, where the animal is 

now lounging under a canopy of leaves, 

catching its breath, charting its next escape, 

she looks to my mouth, eager to read my lips, 

confident that I—who can bring her home 

from across the field with a word, who 

can speak for the willow and the zinnia— 

can surely charm a squirrel down from a tree.

The Storm

Mary Oliver

Now through the white orchard my little dog

romps, breaking the new snow

with wild feet.

Running here running there, excited,

hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins

until the white snow is written upon

in large, exuberant letters,

a long sentence, expressing

the pleasures of the body in this world.

Oh, I could not have said it better

Gratitude: November 28, 2025

To Whom It Definitely Concerns,

Please accept this letter as formal notification that I am resigning from the position of My Own Worst Enemy. I’ve appreciated the opportunity to lower my standards so far they could lose a limbo contest to a crumb. I’ve been honored to serve as the server at the banquet where I eat myself alive. The day I was hired I could have never imagined how many employee of the month plaques I’d acquire from breaking the standing record for standing in one’s own way.

In this position I’ve grown continuously, like bacteria in a staph infection. I had no idea that holding myself back would be contagious. I would like to have a different kind of impact on the future company I keep. The scene I made during our last team building exercise work me to the need for change. I know the young people in the office are still shook by my refusal to catch myself in the trust fall. I apologize for the gory display.

Moving forward, I’ll be pursuing opportunities in another field, preferably one where break rooms are for resting and not for breaking promises to the person I hope to become. I fully intend to replace whatever dreams I shattered when I was beating myself up. I have no idea where I learned “punching in” was a literal term. If I had known better I would have called I’m sick in the head.

I accepted this position initially because I believed it came with the very best insurance plan. How could I fall to my death from the ground floor? Over the years, however, I’ve gotten increasingly familiar with the fine print of the benefits. Turns out, there are no benefits when the co-pay of your life. 

My last day as My Own Worst Enemy will be December 31, 2025. In my final two weeks I will: 1) Fire my inner critic, or at least demote it to part time 2) Assure my passions have the tools they need to unionize with my actions 3) Sit naked on the photocopy machine so there are one hundred copies of my ass to kiss when I’m gone.

Though I suspect it won’t bode well for acquiring a positive referral letter, it’s important I state that I’m unwilling to train a replacement in this position. It is my suggestion that the job be eliminated altogether, and that no future person take on the task. If I can aid in the transition, please let me know.

Sincerely, 

AW Kim

New Moon

How much it must bear on its back,

a great ball of blue shadow,

yet somehow it shines, keeps up

an appearance. For hours tonight,

I walk beneath it, learning.

I want to be better at carrying sorrow.

If my face is a mask, formed over

the shadows that fill me,

may I smile on the world like the moon.

Ted Kooser

 

Gratitude: November 24, 2025

Kinder than Man

And God

please let the deer

on the highway

get some kind of heaven.

Something with tall soft grass

and sweet reunion.

Let the moths in porch lights

go someplace

with a thousand suns,

that taste like sugar

and get swallowed whole.

May the mice

in oil and glue

have forever dry, warm fur

and full bellies.

If I am killed

for simply living,

let death be kinder

than man.

Althea Davis

❤️

The Early Years

I don’t want to say

things were indescribably

bad exactly

but things were

indescribably bad exactly

I don’t want to say the tide

went out and left him

gasping—a landed fish precisely

but the tide did indeed go out

and left him gaping—a dropped ghost

to make matters worse

god gathered up all of god’s things

and paddled out on that tide

so he swore he would die

and to make matters worser still

he rocked back and forth

in a bubble rather boggy and sad

ate nothing but thistles therein

I don’t want to pretend

things were very much worse

than they were

but they very much were

Mark Waldron

.

No. 21

That two shells could be connected at their centers is a new thought I’ve never had. The way the canvas with its colors now turns into cubes. My life has been livid with itself for too long. The way out of my life is to fall out of the bottom of the old one. The way af Klint’s swans lost their faces right away. All this time, we were told to find yourself. The self was only a rumor. Maybe we were supposed to be with our dimensions. So that we could become different shapes within the same shape. Like mid-morning within morning. Yesterday, I heard the neighbors shouting, go wait at 29th street! Then later, just throw it away! I couldn’t hear anything else but, it was so good that you did that. Sometimes writing a poem feels like this. You put language together but the context is missing. Just the crisis remains. How you only hear something splash behind you. Sometimes living feels like this. You live your life, but the context is missing. You think it’s the context that you need. But when it arrives, there’s too much story and violence.

Victoria Chang