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