NaPoWriMo Day 17, 2022

Photo by Alvan Nee via Unsplash

Today’s prompt was “developed by the comic artist Lynda Barry, and it asks you to think about dogs you have known, seen, or heard about, and then use them as a springboard into wherever they take you.” (Full NaPoWriMo post available here.)

I’ve been on the road for the past two days and missed a couple of prompts. I hope to catch up at some point (fingers and toes crossed). In the meantime, here’s my response to today’s prompt. Happy Easter!

The dogs I’ve always wanted

come running out of the woods.
They whimper around my ankles.
How they’ve missed me.
They sit like good girls and good boys.
Their tails sweep angel wings in the dust.
I’m not surprised to find them
here of all places.
They’re not surprised to see me.
Our memories meet halfway.
It’s like we’ve never been parted.
They’ve all loved before
but not like this. They are faithful.
They wait to be called by their names.
They’ve waited for so long.
It’s only been an eternity
since I’ve seen them. They look up
with intelligent, luminous eyes.
How they trust me.
Not one of them is hurt,
not one of them is malnourished.
There’s nobody here
who would harm them. The dogs
I’ve always wanted
come running out of the woods.
They are whole again
and they’ve come to take me home.

I’m also pasting a response to yesterday’s prompt: the curtal sonnet invented by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

The Box Under My Bed

Was filled with blue, wet-bird letters from God.
    She’d been flying them down all year via her plane
          Of unthought. What could I do? I smuggled them all in.
The first one burst open. I buried it in the sod
    Under clouds like blimp mailboxes pouring rain.
          A river flowed through my mouth: rushed, cold, and green.

Each letter was written in her cursive sadness only.
    She told me how there was so much promise in pain–          
          The one faithful thing that was certain to make us mean
What we wished for: to have been happy, unhappy, sane or not, to have
                                                                                                    been lonely,
                                                            to have been.