Encore Presentation

 Tamara Madison

 
Woody, Tamara Madison’s current dog

By Tamara Madison

I used to tell my ESL students about how I loved the German Shepherds we always had on the farm. Then, after one of our cats died and I told them about that too, Rosa came in one day with a box containing a golden-eyed puppy. I had brought my 7-year-old with me that day, and she spent the two hour class bonding with the animal 
I knew wasn't going to be a good fit for our two-cat household. Phone conferences with my ex-husband and my son changed my mind, however, so Rosa's sweet gift came home with us that day. My daughter named him Tiger "because he looks like a tiger without the stripes". He was a fun-loving, garrulous being who turned out to be some kind of pit bull/retriever mix who could look scary but who really wanted to knock you down and lick your face. We had 12 great years with him until he died from cancer.
 A year later, I saw a poster at a dog park, seeking a new home for a German shepherd/border collie mix. He had been abandoned in a dog park (left in an Ikea bag) and the couple that took care of him for a year worried about him with their pit bull female who had become aggressive with him as he got larger, so I took him in. He was well behaved, very intelligent, and quickly bonded with me and my boyfriend. He came with the name Dragon, which we changed to Woody (my daughter's idea, after Woody Guthrie). He was overprotective at the start, suspicious of men in hats and also children, and we had to learn how to manage him. 
Now he is nearly 12, in very good shape, mellow and actually rather lazy but for the occasional spurt of crazy energy. He likes to engage me in ball chasing around the house when he sees I'm getting ready for bed. As a single woman now, I am glad for his companionship (as well as his overprotection) He's black with some border collie markings on chest and tail, but in the sun his auburn highlights show, so I call him "the mahogany dog".

 
Tiger, her first dog
 

At Dusk

The heron waits in new grass.
A young dog for whom life
is an endless reel of joy
and desire, bounds forward
to the strange new vision 
near the pines.

The great bird stands
neck stretched out
like the beak of a tall urn
still as a vase
until the last moment
when the golden roiling
dog-body reveals
its fervent canine grin.

The bird slowly opens
its huge slate wings
and, reluctant, mounts
the heavy air
just above the tallest grass
barely out of the dog's reach
and sails, unhurried,
to the harbor
of a golf course pond.

The dog buries its muzzle
in a hole; an orange moon
pauses soft over the trees,
a tired balloon.

        --The Belly Remembers, Pearl Editions
 

           
 Wild Domestic

When it rains, the cats come in to claim 
the comforts of their entitlement:
spending days and nights curled
on a warm bed, doing nothing
while the dog, who only wants
to know them, paws at the door.

Raindrops swarm on the roof,
the soaked ground sucks at our footsteps. 
The cats lie about entwined, too old now 
even for the dinosaur dance, 
the fight game of their youth.
They nibble at their tinned prey
and even condescend to use the litter box.

One black morning they decide 
there's something they need to do out there;
they scratch at the door and scurry out
into the shifting scrim of rain.
I drive home later to find
the wilder one, the one with crooked tail,
waiting by the door—bird clenched
motionless in his mouth.

He will not suffer my appreciation,
hurries instead to his garage
encampment. This is the work
of wild things, which I need not
know about. Inside, the dog
who only wants to know them, 
listens, head cocked, at the door.

        Wild Domestic, Pearl Editions
 
       
 

The Last Day

My old dog stares at me from the picture frame 
as his younger self: golden, amber-eyed, full of life. 
Even near the end, when tumors filled his chest, 
repelling food, he wanted to walk, to eat, to love. 
I will never forget that awful retching, the meal 
he was determined to eat once and for all 
and then vomited in a bloody mass on the walkway. 
We looked at each other, my daughter and I, 
and got the keys. When he saw the vet’s door,
he moved his still-strong body away – he wanted 
to walk more than anything those days
when he could no longer eat. We pulled him inside 
and petted his granite-hard head. In the sterile room, 
he lay that heavy head in my lap: the velvet ears, 
the knowledge bump, as the doctor pushed the needle in. 
After a moment, the head that had lain so still there 
showed how much more still it could become, as relief 
flooded him and his spirit which had made 
his golden body so light with life, vanished 
as though borne on a zephyr to a place we can’t imagine.

Old Dog

Once he ate uncooked lasagna; a full
two-thirds were missing from the pan.
Another time, he ate about the same size 
portion of a chocolate birthday cake,
the -app- and -irth- parts and most
of the name beneath.

There was also the stray stick or two
of butter, or cookies, or that boneless
skinless chicken breast cooked carefully
à la française (not a trace remained
but for a faint butterfat sheen on the plate).

There was also a bag of pot brownies –
they were mild but he must have had
about four before he went to his bed
on the hearth and had a good, long sleep.

Now, his spirit roves the earth in a bony,
grey-faced body. After almost thirteen years
of good dry kibble, the aforementioned
thefts, and dedicated plate-licking,
he now enjoys delicious, all-meat food
from a can and chicken broth in the mix.
He eats swiftly and thoroughly; life is good.

Inside that structure of bones, fur and joy,
other ebullient forms are busy honoring life
in their own way: cells form great hills
on tongue and near the heart. Soon,
they will dominate, send their host back
into life’s dark matter. I will not blame them.
They, too, have a passion for life.

 

 
Tamara Madison and her current dog Woody

Praise 
Sit, I tell the dog as we reach the corner.  He looks up at me, but avoids my eyes  the way I avoid the face of the clock  when I’m running late. He doesn’t want  to sit, doesn’t see the point. A jerk on the leash and he puts his bottom down.  The light changes immediately. See?  I tell him. You did that! You made the light change just by sitting down!  I don’t feel bad, lying to my dog—he knows the difference, knows that what matters is not what I say but how I say it. We turn down our street, toward the biscuit I have trained him to expect which tells him he has done something wonderful by just being a dog. I unhook the leash, he looks up:  One two three four five! I say and pat  his eager head. The biscuit is crunchy  and shaped just like the mail man. The clock on the microwave greets me 
with approval. Time well spent! it says.  
I know praise when I see it. 

 
Woody, the Mahogany Dog
Sacrament

To ford the river of wild mustard
we lift our knees like drum majors 
marching through tangled undergrowth.
We bathe in the gold dust of it all,
the dog’s black coat flecked 
with pollen even after the ride home.
I think of all the microscopic 
organisms we carry on and in 
our bodies as we walk among the still-
flowering, now-towering plants, 
welcome all of this to my hair, 
to my clothes, to my lungs, 
taking in the sacred body of Earth.

Last two poems from Morpheus Dips His Oar