Book of the Week

 “Woof Worthy” by Marilyn Zelke Windau (Kelsay Books Oct. 2025)
  

 



By Editor Sharon Waller Knutson

Marilyn Zelke Windau’s “Wolf Worthy” poetry collection is poignant, powerful, charming and relatable as she reminds us that dogs are a necessary part of our lives, that we learn from them, they become a part of our family and when they die, we grieve as deeply as we do for our human relatives. Having grown up with dogs, it was like déjà vu to me as she writes about the new puppy, the old dog falling down the stairs, the big dog moving next door, the diagnosis that your dog is dying and you bury your beloved four-legged best friend knowing at your age, you will not adopt another canine leaving you to realize as Marilyn ends her closing poem, “Life. Death./Together. Apart./Alone. Alone./Alone.” The book brings joy, heartbreak and hope.


Marilyn Zelke Windau, of Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, started writing poems at age thirteen. A former art teacher, she has had six books of poetry published: Adventures in Paradise (Finishing Line Press), Momentary Ordinary (Pebblebrook Press), Owning Shadows and Hiccups Haunt Wilson Avenue (Kelsay Books), Beneath the Southern Crux (Water’s Edge Press), and Northwoods Recollections (Bottlecap Press). A Pushcart prize nominee and an award-winning author, she has work published in many journals and anthologies. Marilyn includes her maiden name to honor her father, who was also a writer. When she’s not writing, Marilyn works at restoring her 1891 house, travels to Pembine, WI to the family cabin, and creates mosaics, paintings, and books made with tea papers. A Master Gardener volunteer and an art center docent, she is married to a retired environmental engineer, has three daughters, three grandchildren, and three grand dogs.

Corky

He got old, Mom.
He fell down the basement stairs.
He couldn’t climb anymore.
Corky was your sister Elsie’s dog.
You missed her.
He missed her. 
When she died, her husband, John,
said, “I can’t keep him.
He was her dog. It’s too hard
to see those brown eyes sad.”
So Corky came to live with us,
away from the farm in Adell,
away from big fields 
and broad lie down and look skies.
His not of choice home became
a backyard on Wilson Avenue 
in Jefferson Park in Chicago.
With three small children whining,
he had too many borders.
He remembered Elsie
rounding up chickens,
chopping their necks.
He had chased them 
around the dirt drive, 
they without thoughts
in their heads.
She scooped them up,
plucked their feathers,
and brought them to Chicago
as Sunday dinner gifts.
With no chicken scent reckoning
in Chicago alleyways, 
Corky’s legs went old.
Step falling to the basement
signaled his time of earth completed.
We cried, pull-patted his triangle ears,
rubbed childhood cheeks
 on his German Shepherd fur,
remembered him as our first dog friend,
and took the stairs two at a time upward.

For My Jenny

Oh, my dog girl, I miss you.
The apple tree is shedding white blossom tears
which fall softly—as soft as your fur—
upon the mound of earth which is now your home.

Wrapped in your pink binky you came to me
at four weeks old.
Wrapped in your pink binky you leave me
after fourteen years.

Lie down, my Jenny, and rest now. Rest.
Those back stiff legs can be still.
It hurt me so to see you fall—
wobbly like a newborn foal—
to see you look with fear, not knowing
why your body couldn’t function.
Those big brown eyes, lately clouded, reached out to my heart
as they always could, and told me,
“It must be nearly over now.
Help me, hold me, and yet I must try to rise.”

Little licks on my bare, hair-matted leg
with your nose pressed to me as we rode,
rode to meet our last farewell.
“It’s ok. It’s ok, my Jen,” I said, knowing it wasn’t.
Why do we lie to comfort those we love?

Your last protection, those narrow, hard to find veins, couldn’t win.
“She’s gone already,” he said. “No pain.”
What is no pain? There is pain. I have pain,
and longing and memories.

No plastic bag, no box.
Spread out the blanket in the trunk, your first tomb.
I must dig. It’s something I have to do. In a blur of disbelief.
Keep the dirt off her blanket.
You were so heavy and still as I laid you down.
A little groan came from your mouth and I looked—
hoping beyond hope that you were coming back to me.
But no.

I tried to make you comfortable, placing each foot just so
and putting your ears down                                                                               
Oh, how they used to flop when you’d run.                                                                                  
I made sure your binky covered you 
before I gave you your earth blanket,
telling you I loved you with each rush of dirt.

You weren’t at the bottom of the stairs this morning,
clicking your nails on the hardwood floor.
No more signals to me upstairs that you were waiting for me.
I held your food dish and cried.

Your brush is in the basement. Your hair is on the car seat.
Your corner is empty.
I’m empty.
You won’t curl up at my feet for comfort anymore,
warming me with gentle love.
The love is still here, the warmth—
only to be shared now in thought and memory.
My cub dog.


New Routine

Oh, my grandmother, I have been up 
since the early morning light awakened me.
Not just the light, but the mournful cry 
of a golden kitchen puppy seeking company.
She is up with the sun, to bed with the sun,
having been born in a barn,
nurtured on a farm, and now displaced.
I scoop her up, place her big dog to come paws
out on the rainy driveway.
Immediately, she runs.
She chews wood chips.
She yanks Hosta leaves.
She digs wet earth, then pauses,
nose knowing the breeze.
It brings an air of bread, baking.
Brown, warm, like her mother,
missed, almost forgotten.
It is enough, with a slip of milk,
to regain the energy of the day,
to waddle inside for kibble,
accepting furless hands,
and a pressed embrace
on this new morning.

Electric Dog

It’s late November.
You come bounding in
from the cold-winded air
of the yard, the porch,
smiling and smelling 
of rabbit turds and bird seed
gobbled from under the feeder.

You had looked for apples,
fallen, discarded next door 
by the neighbor’s tree.
Rewarded by one, 
though spotty,
you clenched it 
sweetly, in your jaws,
savoring juice. 

Winter approaches
with its cold coat.
You are invigorated,
come in dancing.
Your fur gleams,
stands up when rubbed.
What a good dog!

Sparks fly.
You, electric dog,
gift energy.


,                                                                                                                                              
Ring Fear

It’s the signal of despair.
It’s the signal of warning
that bad news is imminent.

Our phone rings at 7:30 AM.
Awakened daily by our golden retriever,
thumping on the side of the bed,
we are up with kitchen lights on,
the back door unlocked,
our dog out sniffing her way 
through fog and rabbit smells in the yard.

I give questioning looks to answering
the phone call.
Our daughter? Which one?
What? Is everything okay?
In these desperate days of the coronavirus,
I imagine dreaded scenarios.

Instead, the caller tells me he’s our next-door neighbor,
the one we like to send cake and fruit bread,
because I bake too much and love to share.

He’s at the grocery store at this hour.
What do we need that he can get for us?

Such kindness is a relief this morning,
a blessing.
Sequestered as we are,
this reaching out extends not only hand,
but heart.

He gets us dog yummies.
We are so thankful.


Stuck in the Driveway

Sometimes you’re stuck
in your driveway.
You want to run
down through the back,
through the yards,
open, free.
You want to sniff 
smells from today, 
from yesterday.
You want to seek
critters as friends,
as hunt, as playmates.
You’re a dog.
You have these instincts—
these off-leash goals,
these dreams.

Funny, my girl, my pet,
I have them, too.
I want to be off-leash,
traveling to New Zealand,
to the Great Wall.
I want to meet 
capybaras, those big, furry
rodent creatures 
with inquisitive faces 
in Peru.
I want those sniffs.
I want to recognize
life friends in nature.
I want to feel free 
to toss dreams
into the air,
to pull to my being
life-couplings,
adventures of the day
in the world’s backyard.

When the Big Dog Moves in Next Door

All I saw was the harp-arc of a tail
moving inside their front door.
Our golden retriever heard the bark.
It was a BIG dog bark,
a bark unfamiliar 
in this small dog shared environment.

This was not a Chihuahua bark.
This was not shiatsu talk!
This was an Italian German shepherd.

We knew he was coming.
His owner, sick with cancer,
couldn’t care for him anymore.
His wife said perhaps
she’d take him back after,
but that was iffy.

His name, Tedesco,
gives his origin:
Italian for German.
He probably likes pasta fritta,
and a side of fettuccini with his sups!

Tomorrow, our golden will meet the shepherd.
They may eventually run Europe together—
or at least, the walking trail to Sheboygan.


Sock Babies

Sneaking in the night,
she would confiscate socks,
pairs of them, not singles.

She’d salivate them, 
chew them, tote them
downstairs to her bed,
where she’d curl-cozy them
as her babies until morning.

We’d say, “Where are our socks?”
She’d look up in ignorance
with those big brown innocent eyes.

After we found the socks, she’d smile,
knowing that tonight
there’d be delight in another hunt.



Tom and Peme

He loves this dog.
She’s his dog.
He hasn’t had a dog
who followed him
since Bounce, 
a long-eared spaniel,
who trailed him as a child
through muck and mire,
through woods and stream.
This one, a golden retriever,
just now tells him no.
What? No?
Peme* returns to sit by the car
when he free-legs it 
cross country on skis.
She learned the day before
that this journey’s not fair.
She got her female lib up.
Twice called, twice obeyed,
she then sits and watches
the woods go by his eyes,
not hers.
She sits in the powder 
of snowdrift,
waits for the sweat of him
to return.


My Golden Pup

I await the news, the test results
of heightened creatinine levels,
that you are dying of kidney disease.

Peme, my girl, my golden pup,
you are only ten years old.
I want you to stay with me forever.

At my age, we will not seek
another canine to love.
We will never again home another pup.
You are our last hug dog.

Your ears are silken, so soft.
I close my eyes to feel their blessing.

You love to have me knuckle them,
rub and rub and…
No, don’t stop.
Your nose under my hand
lifts the joy for yet another wrist turn.

You snore at me upstairs on the floor
from your alternate bed, next to me.
You compete with Dad on the other side.
I admit that I hum sometimes in cadence.

In these days of the pandemic, it seems too cruel
that you must be a victim.
The world is crying death.
I don’t want your death.
I want to curl up with you and hug your life.

I cry even now and I haven’t been given
your death sentence.
I don’t want you in memory.
I want you in golden fur.


Grief

Overnight, a winter snowstorm has covered 
your last paw prints.

I imagine I see you from my bathroom window
prowling backyard trees, sniffing for bunnies.
Tom has let you out after you thumped
his side of the bed in early morning.
Thankfully you didn’t wake me,
although I was awake and listening
to your breath hum-moans.
They were in conjunction with mine.
We shared inhalations and exhalations
of sleep and dream time.

I dream of you now, my golden girl.
I can’t let you go,

I pat the staircase landing
where you always waited for me
to pet you and knuckle-knead your ears.

I don’t want the vacuum cleaner to rob me
of our dining room carpet retriever fur.
Yellow strands curl and bind the navy-blue rug,
curl and bind my heart.

Outside, squirrels are joyous.
They leap the snow banks to trees with joy,
with no encumbrances, and
no beloved dog to chase them for fun.

Life. Death.
Together. Apart.
Alone. Alone.
Alone.

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https://kelsaybooks.com/products/woof-worthy