Patchwork Prose and Verse
Boo’s got that human look in his eyes
the kind people give as eye rolls
stare-down between dog and man
are you being for real?
I’m gon’ ignore that!
you’re joking, right??
go away!
I’m done.
Shoo!
****
oh,
but then
Boo Radley
steals my chair, begs
me to sit with him
to assure him that his
world is on its right axis
that he is the favorite dog
begs my forgiveness for his Boo shoos
they like their mini donut breakfasts
it’s what happens on Sundays here
pre First-Baptist-of-You-Tube
sitting at their dad’s feet
waiting on a bite
patient Schnoodles
best-behavied
time of
all
Day 6
our Boo Radley
did a most
surprising thing ~
our Boo
forced a threatening
brown bull to retreat
to turn tail
and
take to the woods
or was that his intention?
was he a charger of bulls
or was he a shepherd
of cows?
was he herding them
back in their farm direction
because he knew they
were lost, drifters one
farm south of theirs,
needing a nudge?
this is, after all
the Funny Farm,
where you have
to be a little
sideways to end
up here in the
land of the
unexpected
where wrinkles in
perceptions become
realities like this:
Boo Radley is a
shepherding schnoodle
of lost herds, the
meanest bulls not
excluded, because
he knows how it feels
to be lost, looking
for home, aggressively
persuading them not
to give up a good thing
all this brings back
the day we were
on the beach
late afternoon
on a cloudy day
sipping wine
on a blanket
when two women
much further into
their bottle
walked by us too close
to our beach campout
according to Boo
Boo corrected
them
~not politely~
and in their swagger,
in their smirks,
their chuckles,
one taunted back:
oh, what a little badass!
fast forward
the years
to today and I
want to go back
to that moment
and say
yes ma’am,
he certainly is!
he fulfilled the
prophesy at the bottom
of your
wine bottle
you saw the future
of our little rescue
Schnoodle named
Boo Radley~
a champion badass
herder of bulls
you weren’t bullshitting
Angie Braaten is our host today at http://www.ethicalela.com for the 15th day of #VerseLove2024. You can read her full prompt, along with the poems and comments of others, here. Today, Angie inspires us to write elegies in the style of Clint Smith. You can read two of Clint Smith’s poems here:
Clint Smith’s “Playground Elegy” and “No More Elegies Today”
Honey Buttered Toast
Today I will
write a poem
about a dog eating honey buttered toast
it will not be a metaphor for a land of milk and honey or savior-style pet rescue
it will not be an allegory for a character named Boo Radley, white as a ghost, who saved people, found standing behind a door
but rather about bottled wildflowers
sweetly spun nectar of honeybees
dancing through the meadow, kissing blossoms
but rather about buttery cream
freshly churned from Guernseys
grazing green grasses of the meadow
but rather about chaffed wheat
grain gleaned from the meadow
ground and baked and sliced and toasted
but rather about the blending of ordinary meadow things
that become the extraordinary
when the world doesn’t want to read another dog poem
Several years ago, I led a poetry workshop for teachers in my district using Mary Oliver’s Dogsongs as our text, inviting participants to write mirror poems inspired by the late great poet. One of my favorite poems in this collection is For I Will Consider My Dog Percy, which she wrote about her own dog following the form of Christopher Smart in the 1700s in his poem Jubilate Agno, or For I will Consider My Cat Jeoffry.
Over the years, we have adopted several rescues, and they appear frequently in my writing. They’re all named after favorite Literary figures. We have Boo Radley from To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, because he was abandoned and found behind a door, an outcast of his original people. His rescue organization named him Einstein for his matted and untamed hair when he was found. I wrote a For I Will Consider poem about my Schnoodle, Boo Radley.
We also adopted a badly-abused (mostly Schnauzer, but some poodle) Schnoodle named Henry at the time, who had road rash and a broken leg that required surgery to save and eight weeks of intense physical therapy with his foster mom. We followed his journey back to health online, and prayed they would place him with us. When the news came, we eagerly met the foster mom and welcomed Henry into the fold, renaming him Fitz for F. Scott Fitzgerald, the party animal author. Turns out, he’d been correctly named as transcendental Henry David Thoreau, because he doesn’t party. Here is a poem I wrote about my Schnoodle, Fitz.
Which brings me to King. He was a young stray found on the streets of north Georgia, and he was supposed to be our girl. I’d put in a request with the rescue about a year prior to welcoming King, but the rescue called one day to let me know that they had a Schnoodle who met all the matching criteria as a good adoptee for us….except gender. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to meet this boy who needed a home but who had been turned down by two other families. It only took seconds. King was renamed Ollie for my favorite poet, Mary Oliver, and rode home with us that very day we’d hopped in the car for the 3 hour drive to meet him.
I’ve never written a For I Will Consider poem about Ollie, so today is the day especially set aside for my trophy dog we call the baby..
For I Will Consider My Schnoodle Ollie
For I will consider my schnoodle Ollie.
For he was a young stray running the streets, a real canine gangsta.
For he was named King like royalty, taken to a foster castle.
For he was rescued, brought to our Funny Farm with his one true love: a ball.
For he was renamed Ollie after Mary, who loved dogs through and through.
For he needs no bells and whistles when simple will do.
For he realized all too soon he had brothers vying for position.
For he rejected all possibility of being low dog.
For he rose like a king to the throne.
For we call him the baby.
For he eats sheets.
For he listens for empty K-cup boxes to hit the floor....(for he eats those too).
For he bites ankles and eats Ada Limon poetry books.
For he places one paw on the head of his brothers (sibling annoyance tactic? or knighting?).
For there is no such thing as a quick pee when there are things to see.
For he "kicks" the ball with his nose like a gauntlet at our feet. Throw, he commands.
For he catches popcorn mid-air.
For he fully belongs in our tribe.
For we whisper to him: you're the best dog we've got.
For he returns our love with royal full-face kisses.
Today at http://www.ethicalela.com, Margaret Gibson Simon of Louisiana is our host for Day 1 of the February Open Write. She challenges us to write an elfchen, a form she has written almost each day of 2024. You can read her prompt along with (is it elveschen or elfchens that is plural?) here.
She gives us the basic rules:
Elfchen Guidelines:
Line 1: One word
Line 2: Two words about what the word does.
Line 3: Location or place-based description in 3 words.
Line 4: Metaphor or deeper meaning in 4 words.
Line 5: A new word that somehow summarizes or transforms from the original word.
Here on the farm, we are getting ready for a prescribed burn to prevent wildfires and nourish the soil. After the firebreak was cut and the dogs discovered all the wildlife tracks in the soft red clay earth, I could hardly get them back into the house – – it was like a dessert buffet for them! These walks inspired today’s elfchen.
Deer-ssert!
firebreak
illuminates tracks
schnoodle noses enflamed
decadence of wildlife sweets
deer-ssert
We have three schnoodles, all rescues, who came to us bruised and battered, scarred and scared.
We understood.
Going from abandonment, abuse, neglect, and betrayal to a shelter or foster home, to a forever home must be filled with all sorts of emotions and confusion – and I am a firm believer that dogs have emotions.
That’s why we forgave Boo for biting a couple of times at the start. Here was a dog who was shivering with fear in the back of a van in a wire kennel. He was matted and thin, dirty and smelly.
He almost wasn’t ours. We’d found dogs online twice that we’d come to adopt, and both times we’d completed paperwork only to find that when we arrived, our dog had “just been adopted” by someone else. Right out from under us.
A dog they dubbed Einstein for his wild hair had just arrived in the parking lot on one such occasion, and was being held in a van until he could be processed. They could not put him out for adoption with the other dogs yet. I think the lady who’d promised us the cute female Maltipoo with some sweet little Hawaiian name truly felt bad that we’d driven an hour to adopt her only to find she had just left with another family, so she’d added, “But there is one other possibility. I can’t let him go today, but he’s just arrived. Want to take a look?”
We did.
We followed her to the parking lot, where she’d opened the van doors to reveal the most frightened dog we’d ever seen, visibly shaking and unsure of what was happening to him.
I stuck my head in and spoke softly to him, and he calmed down. I asked to hold him, and the woman reluctantly allowed it after explaining that the landlord of a nearby apartment complex had brought him by and begged her to take him. She told the woman that the dog’s owners had left two weeks earlier, that this dog had been abandoned in a duplex, and someone must have thought he would be found immediately. He wasn’t. They’d left food and water down, but it was all gone by the time the cleaning crew showed up to find a huge mess teeming with flies and one terrified dog.
We adopted Einstein and named him Boo Radley. He had no reason to trust anyone anymore – if he ever had – and we had a lot of ground to gain with him. He snapped and bit at first, but with love and time, he has come to be a loving companion, despite his many lingering issues.
This is the dog who will cower to the laundry room and shake when anyone’s cell phone dings. Let it ring with music and he will howl at the moon.. He becomes agitated and obsessed with killing flies if he sees one buzzing around. If he smells the heat of a toaster, he will shake with fear and seek a lap. If the smoke alarm (or any timer or noise such as a clock) goes off, he goes into a tizzy. We think that somewhere along the way, he experienced a fire.
But this is the same dog who sits awake all night at our heads, guarding us as we sleep, then sleeps all day. This is the dog who sits at the head of the driveway and doesn’t want to come inside until both of us are home from work. He knows he has a family, and he knows his role is to protect and love us – as ours is to protect and love him. This is the same dog who knows he will never again be abandoned or abused or neglected. The same dog who now rests assured of his place in his forever family.
This is what rescue will do.
We celebrated Christmas with the Johnson side of the family last night and played a couple of games of Left Center Right on the heels of dessert. The dinner menu was kept simple – Stouffer’s Lasagna, Cole’s garlic bread, and salad, with peach cobbler a la mode for dessert. Christmas and Thanksgiving are the only occasions on which I get out the good dishes and set the table with a tablecloth, chargers, placemats, fabric napkins, and a centerpiece – in our case three, to honor our departed mothers. We still don’t have much to drink from besides Mason jars, so we use clear Solo cups for our sweet tea. These dishes, I should mention, were given across the years (like my beloved Nativity set) as Christmas gifts from my mother and my former mother-in-law to build a set a few rungs higher than our basic white lead-free, chip-proof Corelle which came on the scene when I felt the first signs of arthritis.
The ancestral kitchen spirits are always welcome, but on holidays we go a step further in summoning them; we light candles for Briar and Kyle’s mom (Pat), Bethany’s mom (Barbara), and my mom (Miriam), as we do on other holidays to remember them and keep them close.
I do not believe in fancy seating place cards, though, not when there is theater box candy screaming in the dollar store to be used for this purpose. Everyone had a favorite at the top of their plate: Reese’s Pieces (Jack). Milk Duds (Briar), Raisinets (Kyle), Sugar Babies (Jax), Junior Mints (Andrew), Hot Tamales (Bethany), SweeTarts (Cece), and Boston Baked Beans (me).
Even the dogs wanted in on the fun. We think the one reason Briar won both games when he was the only one who had to be coaxed into playing was that Ollie sat in his lap bringing good vibes. Fitz stayed with Bethany, and Boo Radley stayed under the table and with Kyle.
We exchanged gifts and sampled a libation or two, and our gift with strings attached were lottery tickets for the 620 million Powerball drawing on Saturday night. If any of us wins on those tickets, we have to give the other 7 folks in the picture 5 million dollars each. What’s 35 million on 620? We each placed our ticket on the coffee table and put a finger at the top of our ticket so we can check all the numbers via that photo. Nothing like a little family accountability in case someone tries to plan a surprise move to Switzerland suddenly.
Folks usually hope and pray for a white Christmas. We are hoping and praying for a green one!
Our time on this Thanksgiving getaway is coming to a close for now, but instead of starting the campsite breakdown as we normally do on the last afternoon of our camping adventures, we took an impromptu hike with the boys on the trails of F. D. Roosevelt State Park in Pine Mountain, Georgia. I’m sharing a video of their tail-wagging joy as Boo Radley, Ollie, and Fitz traversed the terrain.
We met another couple hiking, and the wife observed, “Looks like you have your own sled dog team!” I chuckled because I am always referring to them as our sled dogs. When my sister in law walked them with me this week, she was surprised by how hard they pull. I told her that if there were snow on the ground, we could put on skis and they’d pull us all around the campground. Truth.
Our Georgia State Parks offer different types of clubs for kayakers, canyon climbers, dog walkers, and cyclists. Tails on Trails seems like it would be a healthy challenge for the two humans belonging to these three canine trail enthusiasts for 2024, so already I’m thinking of working it into a yearly goal.
As we sat around the campfire last night, I turned on the green sparkle lights and watched them dancing like tiny fairies in the trees as I reflected on what I loved most about the week- being able to get away and enjoy time in nature with family, spending time with each other and with our dogs, and truly taking time to give thanks for our blessings. Time. Togetherness. Thanksgiving.
These are the parts of the week that meant the most to me.
Over the past ten years, we’ve rescued three Schnoodles and given them all literary names. Boo Radley (To Kill a Mockingbird) was found behind the door of an empty duplex, abandoned by his former family when they moved out. Ollie (named for my favorite poet, Mary Oliver) was a young stray found on the streets of north Georgia. Fitz (short for F. Scott Fitzgerald) came to us following a badly broken leg (the x-ray looked like a candy cane snapped off at 12:00 of the hook) that the vets barely managed to save. He also had extensive road rash, leading us to believe that he may have been thrown from a moving car. He’s had a large cyst removed from his neck and had most of his rotting teeth extracted since he came to us, including his canines because of CUPS Disease. He also has cataracts, but he can still miraculously spot a lizard from a mile away. Fitz is the happiest little dog I’ve known in all my years.
Fitz is my soul dog – he sleeps right next to me, he has to be in my lap, and he invades my space right down to the air I breathe (he’s usually checking to see what I’ve most recently eaten when he gets in my face, being the little foodie he is). He likes to do what I do, so if I get up from writing to refill my coffee, he assumes the writer position in my chair in front of my computer. He heard it was NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), so here he is – working on his first novel. He’s going for those 50,000 words this month.
And oh, how I wish I knew his story.
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
our Schnoodle “Fitz” for short, works
on his current book
Common Threads 