“As it fell upon a day
In the merry month of May,
Sitting in a pleasant shade
Which a grove of myrtles made,
Beasts did leap and birds did sing,
Trees did grow and plants did spring;
Every thing did banish moan
Save the Nightingale alone.
She, poor bird, as all forlorn,
Lean’d her breast against a thorn,
And there sung the dolefull’st ditty
That to hear it was great pity.
Fie fie, fie, now would she cry;
Tereu, tereu, by and by:
That to hear her so complain
Scarce I could from tears refrain;
For her griefs so lively shown
made me think upon mine own.
-Ah, thought I, thou mourn’st in vain,
None takes pity on thy pain:
Senseless trees, they cannot hear thee,
Ruthless beasts, they will not cheer thee;
King Pandion, he is dead,
All thy fellow birds do sing
Careless of thy sorrowing:
Even so, poor birds, like thee
None alive will pity me.”

“At Big Ma’s, I stood in the middle of each room,
careful not to lean on walls or too near closets,
afraid the vermin—now outnumbering
the hairs on her head—would find their way
to my purse or pockets.

When asked to go to her drawer for antacid, I hesitated
knowing I’d have to reach in amidst their dark scattering
to soother her.  These are the sacrifices we make
my mother said while on the floor at Big Ma’s feet,
clipping her toenails, using a slipper
to smash roaches as they came.

My father hated the dirtiness of any place
yet knelt, in his finest charcoal suit, near the phone cord—
twisting its disconnected wires—
surely aware of the thick dust graying his elbows and knees.
Until he heard a dial-tone and Big Ma said
I can call now if I need you, he did not rise.

Hours later, in public with our private lives well-clothed,
when I saw the silvery-brown pest slip
from his pants cuff—remembering my parents’ selflessness,
their hushed mercy—I used my sharp-tipped shoes
to make a sacrifice and killed it—quite, swift—without mentioning
my fear and without his ever knowing.”

“They were of a different hue.
They were all the same color.
The roaches at 51 Felton Street
Went to work when we snored.
They raced for black lines
At the flick of a switch.
They were an athletic sort.
Some of their youngest laughed
At my Chuck Taylor’s,
And I just knew 
I’d never make it to the Olympics.
Sleep and they’d creep
Into my ears come night.
They conspired with certain spiders
Regarding ladder and crane designs.
Anything to top the refrigerator,
For the loaf of white bread.
They did not fly
Because they chose not to.
They would not sing
Above a roach whisper.

The Roaches on Felton ruled
The cabinets, the land
Of pots and plates and pans.
They were well-dress and polite.
We sneezed.  They said
Bless you. They coughed.
We slapped their shiny backs.
But I don’t have to miss them
Coursing through the walls
I come from.  All that crawls 
Beneath me dies
When I try my walk away.
Every time I tell a lie, I smile
And imagine their coupling, oh
God, their loveless orgies.
Insects. Incest. 674 families
Below my family’s beds.
The roaches at 51 Felton Street,
They hate my human face.
They know my last name.”

“The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors’ dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.”

“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—not one bit.

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 the others in prose.”

“You want a dog
but you are like a cat,
though you hate cats,
which is a very catlike
position. I want a cat
but you’re allergic
so we’ll get a dog
who will be like me.
Besides, I realize that,
having you, I already
have a cat. You have
intense fixations, like
a cat. Though you’re
tall and strong, you walk
lightly on the balls
of your feet, like a cat.
You’re good at
everything you ever
try to do. In your
reticence you’d rather
not be written about or
analyzed, like a cat.
But you are very good
to look at, to study,
in your many moods
and attitudes, like a cat.
And your affection
is sudden and real,
radiating mystery
and heat beside me,
like a cat.

“Cats sleep
Anywhere,
Any table,
Any chair,
Top of piano,
Window-ledge,
In the middle,
On the edge,
Open drawer,
Empty shoe,
Anybody’s
Lap will do,
Fitted in a 
Cardboard box,
In the cupboard
With your frocks—
Anywhere!
They don’t care!
Cats sleep
Anywhere.”

In an ocean, ‘way out yonder
(As all sapient people know)
Is the land of Wonder-wander,
Whither children love to go:
It’s their playing, romping, swinging,
That give great joy to me
While the Dinkey-Bird goes singing
In the amfalula tree!
There the gum-drops grow like cherries,
And taffy’s thick as peas—
Caramels you pick like berries
When, and where, and how you please;
Big red sugar-plums are clinging
To the cliffs beside that sea
Where the Dinkey-Bird is singing
In the amfalula tree
So when children shout and scamper
And make merry all the day,
When there’s naught to put a damper
To the ardor of their play;
When I hear their laughter ringing,
Then I’m sure as sure can be
That the Dinkey-Bird is singing
In the amfalula tree
For the Dinkey-Bird’s bravuras
And staccatos are so sweet—
His roulades, apoggiaturas,
And robustos so complete,
That the youth of every nation—
Be they near or far away—
Have especial delectation
In that gladsome roundelay.
Their eyes grow bright and brighter,
Their lungs begin to crow,
Their hearts get light and lighter,
And their cheeks are all aglow;
For an echo cometh bringing
The news to all and me,
That the Dinkey-Bird is singing
In the amfalula tree.
I’m sure you like to go there
To see your feathered friend,—
And so many goodies grow there
You would like to comprehend!
Speed, little dreams, your winging
To that land across the sea
Where the Dinkey-Bird is singing
In the amfalula tree!

Nikki Giovanni, photo by B.A. Van Sise (Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry)

Allowables – Nikki Giovanni 

“I killed a spider
Not a murderous brown recluse
Nor even a black widow
And if the truth were told this
Was only a small
Sort of papery spider
Who should have run
When I picked up the book
But she didn’t
And she scared me
And I smashed her

I don’t think
I’m allowed

To kill something
Because I am
Frightened”

“Oh what shall I do for a dog?
Of sight I have not got a particle,
Globe, Standard, or Sun,
Times, Chronicle—none
Can give me a good leading article.

A Mastiff once led me about,
But people appear’d so to fear him—
I might have got pence
Without his defense,
But charity would not come near him.

A blood-hound was not much amiss,
But instinct at last got the upper;
And tracking Bill Soames,
And thieves to their homes,
I never could get home to supper.

A fox-hound once served me as guide,
A good one at hill and at valley;
But day after day
He led me astray,
To follow a milk-woman’s tally.

A Turnspit once did me good turns
At going, and crossing, and stopping;
Till one day his breed
Went off at full speed,
To spit at a great fire in Wapping

A Pointer once pointed my way,
But did not turn out quite so pleasant;
Each hour I’d a stop
At a Poulterer’s shop
To point at a very high pheasant.

A Pug did not suit me at all,
The feature unluckily rose up;
And folks took offence
When offering pence,
Because of his turning his nose up.

A Butcher once gave me a dog,
That turn’d out the worst one of any;
A Bull dog’s own pup,
I got a toss up,
Before he had brought me a penny.

My next was a Westminster dog,
From Aistrop the regular cadger;
But, sightless, I saw
He never would draw
A blind man so well as a badger.

A Greyhound I got by a swop,
But, Lord! we soon came to divorces;
He treated my strip
Of cord like a slip,
And left me to go my own courses.

My next was a Newfoundland brute,
As big as a calf fit for slaughter;
But my old cataract
So truly he back’d
I always fell into the water.

I once had a sheep-dog for guide,
His worth did not value a button;
I found it no go,
A Smithfield Ducrow,
To stand on four saddles of mutton.

My next was an Esquimaux dog,
A dog that my bones ache to talk on,
For picking his ways
On cold frosty days
He pick’d out the slides for a walk-on.

Bijou was a lady-like dog,
But vex’d me at night not a little,
When tea-time was come
She would not go home,
Her tail had once trail’d a tin kettle.

I once had a sort of a Shock,
And kiss’d a street post like a brother,
And lost every tooth
In learning this truth—
One blind cannot well lead another.

A Terrier was far from a trump,
He had one defect, and a thorough,
I never could stir,
‘Od rabbit the cur!
Without going into the Borough.

My next was Dalmatian, the dog!
And let me in danger, oh crikey!
By chasing horse heels
Between carriage wheels
Till I come upon boards that were spiky.

The next that I had was from Cross, 
And once was a favourite Spaniel
With Nero, now dead,
And so I was led
Right up to his den, like a Daniel

A Mongrel I tried, and he did,
As far as the profit and lossing,
Except that the kind
Endangers the blind,
The breed is so fond of a crossing.

A Setter was quite to my taste,
In alleys or streets broad or narrow,
Till one day I met
A very dead set,
At a very dead horse in a barrow.

I once had a dog that went mad,
And sorry I was that I got him;
It came to a run,
And a man with a gun
Pepper’d me when he ought to have shot him.

My profits have gone to the dogs,
My trade has been such a deceiver,
I fear that my aim
Is a mere loosing game,
Unless I can find a Retriever.”

“Amongst the sights that Mrs. Bond
Enjoyed yet grieved at more than others,
Were little ducklings in a pond,
Swimming about beside their mothers—
Small things like living water-lilies,
But yellow as the daffo-dillies.

‘It’s very hard,’ she used to moan,
‘That other people have their ducklings
To grace their waters—mine alone
Have never any pretty chucklings.’
For why!—each little yellow navy
Went down—all downy—to old Davy!

She had a lake—a pond, I mean—
Its wave was rather thick than pearly—
She had two ducks, their napes were green—
She had a drake, his tail was curly,—
Yet spite of drake, and ducks, and pond,
No little ducks had Mrs. Bond!

The birds were both the best of mothers—
The nests had eggs—the eggs had luck—
The infant D’s came forth like others—
But there, alas! the matter stuck!
They might as well have all died addle
As die when they began to paddle!

For when, as native instinct taught her,
The mother set her brood afloat,
They sank ere long right under water,
Like any overloaded boat;
They were web-footed too to see,
As ducks and spiders ought to be!

No peccant humor in a gander
Brought havoc on her little folks,—
No poaching cook—a frying pander
To appetite,—destroyed their yolks,—
Beneath her very eyes, Od rot ’em!
They went, like plummets, to the bottom.

The thing was strange—a contradiction
It seem’d of nature and her works!
For little ducks, beyond conviction,
Should float without the help of corks:
Great Johnson, it bewildered him!
To hear of ducks that could not swim.

Poor Mrs. Bond! what could she do
But change the breed—and she tried divers
Which dived as all seemed born to do;
No little ones were e’er survivors—
Like those that copy gems, I’m thinking,
They all were given to die-sinking!

In vain their downy coats were shorn;
They floundered still!—Batch after batch went!
The little fools seemed only born
And hatched for nothing but a hatchment!
Whene’er they launched—oh, sight of wonder!
Like fires the water ‘got them under.’

No woman ever gave their lucks
A better chance than Mrs. Bond did;
At last quite out of heart and ducks,
She gave her pond up, and desponded;
For Death among the water-lilies,
Cried “Duc ad me” to all her dillies!

But though resolved to breed no more,
She brooded often on this riddle—
Alas! ’twas darker than before!
At last about the summer’s middle,
What Johnson, Mrs. Bond, or none did,
To clear the matter up the Sun did!

The thirsty Sirius dog-like drank
So deep, his furious tongue to cool,
The shallow waters sank and sank,
And lo, from out the wasted pool,
Too hot to hold them any longer,
There crawled some eels as big as conger!

I wish all folks would look a bit,
In such a case below the surface;
And when the eels were caught and split
By Mrs. Bond, just think of her face,
In each inside at once to spy
A duckling turned to giblet-pie!

The sight at once explained the case,
Making the Dame look rather silly:
The tenants of that Eely Place
Had found the way to Pick a dilly,
And so, by under-water suction,
Had wrought the little ducks’ abduction.”

“You need your Cat.
When you slump down
All tired and flat
With too much town
With too many lifts
Too many floors
Too many neon-lit
Corridors
Too many people
Telling you what
You just must do
And what you must not
With too much headache
Video glow
Too many answers
You will never know
Then stroke the Cat
That warms your knee
You’ll find her purr
Is a battery
For into your hands
Will flow the powers
Of the beast who ignore
These ways of ours
And you’ll be refreshed
Through the Cat on your lap
With a Leopard’s yawn
And a Tiger’s nap.”

“Ants are not fond of margarine. Like us they prefer
Butter. They do not have cholesterol problems
Because as yet they do not own TVs. For centuries
They have toiled in order that they might be able to
Take a night off and watch the Northern Lights which
Are their version of canned laughter. They hate picnics
But feel compelled by folklore to attend them
Or at minimum do a drive by chicken leg grab. Their
Queen is a pain in the ass. They don’t love her but
Without her they would be common, so they serve her.
She is an insatiable nymphomaniac but they don’t
Hold that against her trying instead to stay busy with work.
Forgotten ancient languages have been genetically
Imprinted in them at birth and they say things they
Don’t understand. Like us they often make bad marriages.
But because of their outstanding physical prowess
And humility there is seldom cause for divorce. They
Haven’t read the great philosophers but they know them
Innately. They love the flowers of Spring and lacking
Perspective eagerly run all over them. They
Are much like us. They are nudists but because Puritanism
Has not invaded their genetic code, it does not
Affect their work ethic and each ant loves its own body.
Therefore they don’t care about go-go boots and
Sandals. Like us, Ants are driven by their hearts and pretend
That it is all in the name of duty. Ants are never impulsive.
When they laugh, the gardens of old maids tremble. Ants
Love to dance but lack a sense of rhythm so
They gave it up when Homer scorned them. Rain is their
Sensuality. It makes them feel delirious and late. Quivering
And running between rain drops to their fate.”

[Part I] 
“The Moose is a noble dolt.
The Elk is a fool.
The Rhinoceros is the biggest bore of them all.
The Hippopotamus is a Giant River Pig.
The Hyena is a striped dog who thought he was a Laughing Horse.
The Lion is a Queer Cat who by the power of his Queerness became a great Jowled Cat.
The Tiger is a pure cat.
The Panther hates cats.
The Cheetah is a dog who thought he was a Fast Cat.
The Giraffe is a Horse who grew fond of Tree-Top Leaves.
The Snake has a body beautiful,
And the Elephant is the Lord,
the Hook & Curl of his trunk,
the long-lashéd Eye.
The Sloth is a Chinese Poet upsidedown.
The Ant-Eater is a long-nosed investigator of Villages.
The Scorpion is a Sea-Spider trapped on land.
The Whale is More so.
The Man is very strange.

[Part II]
The Spider monkey is a little fool.
The Pekinese Doll is a dog.
The Dachshund is a snake full of Love.
The Siamese Cat is an Angry Monkey.
The Woman is a cellular mesh of lies as well as a Scratcher.
The Woman has a dark blossom between her Thighs.
The Buddha is Known.
The Messiah is Unborn.
The Boll Weevil is a pants rotter.
The ant a Warrior.
The worm is a long history oozing out of Who?
Who!
Mu!
Wu!
The dog is a god.
The dog is a balker.
The Leopard is Incontinent, said Dante, free from the Severity of Leopard
The Angel Rules the Jungle.
Blake is Blake.
The Cow has its own way with water.
And the Tick sticks in your hair & swells—
The Shark I never Saw

The purple ass baboon is Insane
The Sparrow is a little grey bird
The Chimpanzee is Wise
The American a Sniper
The Gull a bringer of Snail Shells
The Parrot I love
The snail knows the Unborn Void of Tao and that’s why he left his house for Gull
The Sea Bird is all Belly
Crows are Dawn Singers
The Bee hums busily
The Frog leaped out of Water
The Abominable Snowman is not abominable at all, he doesn’t hurt anybody—
The Rat has many theories—
The Spider means money—
The Fly has Seven Million brothers—
The Seal is on my Roof

The Goose goes north
The Robin wins the spring
The caterpillar waits
The Nightingale I have been
The mockingbird loves TV aerials
The Rabbit
The vulture trails the Puma
The wolf snaps the Bear
The Lizard
The Eeel
The Octopus
The Tapeworm
The Finger
The Cock
The Germ
The Fingernail
The Wall

The Swordfish has a Beak of Wood
The Lobster is friendly.
The flea leaps,
The Cockroach is Reverenced,
The Bedbug rolls.”

“The animals were imperfect, 
long of tail, 
sorrowful of head. 
Little by little they got adjusted, 
made landscape, 
acquired spots, graces, flight. 
The cat only, 
the cat appeared complete 
and proud: 
born fully finished 
he walked by himself and knew what he wanted. 

Man wants to be fish and bird, 
the serpent had wanted wings, 
the dog is a displaced lion, 
the engineer wants to be a poet, 
the fly studies how to be a swallow, 
the poet tries to imitate flies,
but the cat 
wants only to be a cat 
and every cat is cat 
from whiskers to tail, 
from presentiment to living rat, 
from the night right up to his golden eyes. 

Nothing has 
his unity, 
nothing lunar or floral 
has such a texture: 
he is one whole 
like the sun or the topaz, 
and the springing curve of his contour
firm and subtle as 
the line of a ship’s prow. 
His yellow eyes 
leave a single slot 
through which the coins of night drop. 

Oh little 
emperor without a realm, 
conquistador without a country, 
smallest tiger in the salon, 
and nuptial sultan of the heaven 
of erotic housetops. 
Love’s wind you claim
in the wild weather 
when you pass 
and place 
four feet, delicate, 
on the ground, 
sniffing, 
distrusting the whole universe 
as if it all were too dirty 
for a cat’s immaculate foot. 

Oh proud Independent of the house, 
haughty remnant of night 
lazy, athletic 
and alien, 
profoundest cat, 
secret police 
of the dwellings 
flag 
of a vanished velvet, 
surely there is no enigma 
in your manner, 
perhaps no mystery, 
the whole world knows you and you belong
to the least mysterious of householders 
perhaps all feel that, all who feel themselves owners, 
masters, uncles 
of cats, companions, colleagues, 
students or friends 
of the cat. 

I don’t—
I don’t buy that, 
I don’t understand cats. 
All these I know: life and its archipelago, 
the sea and the unmeasurable city, 
botany—
the pistil and its deviations, 
the for and the minus of mathematics, 
the world’s volcanic funnels, 
the crocodile’s unreal rind, 
the fireman’s unknowable goodness, 
yet I cannot decipher a cat. 
My understanding slips on his indifference, 
his eyes hold golden numbers.”

“I’d be a dainty contained cool
Greek figurette
on a morning shore—
H.D.

I’d flitter and feed and delouse myself
close to Williams’ house
and his kind eyes

I’d be a never-museumed tinted glass
breakable from the shelves of Marianne Moore.

On Stevens’ fictive sibilant hibiscus flower
I’d poise myself, a cuckoo flamingo-pink.

I’d plunge the depths with Zukofsky
and all that means—stirred earth,
cut sky, organ-sounding, resounding
anew, anew.

I’d prick the sand in cunning, lean,
Cummings irony, a little drunk dead sober.
Man, that walk down the beach!

I’d sit on a quiet fence
and sing a quiet thing: sincere, sincere.
And that would be Reznikoff.”

“My quarrel with your quorum, Monsignor
Flamingo, is that you scant the rubicund
in favor of a fatal petal
tint. I would rather bask
in riots of the roseate
than measure your footfalls’
holy protocols beside the head-
board of a drowsy demiurge.
I think God snores in rose
leaves of serenity, not in your
clatter of cadaverous vermeils.

I find flamingos beautiful Tartuffes
who entice as they distance me.
When they display their billiarding,
adolescent sprawl of knees I
remember the parochial
school girls in pink cashmeres, their rosy
kneecaps polished by novenas.

Flamingo have the silhouettes
of parking meters. They have no epaulettes
and yet seem always in uniform—
little, stilted caudillos! They swarm
in unruffled ripples of defiling pink.
They mimic ballerinas and yet stink.
Flamingos are dirty in their purity,
blazon Venezuelas of lewd suavity.
Beneath their transcendent, backbent
legs flamingos are somnolent
and lubricious birds whose stiff tutus
amuse
the spoonbills and anhingas who erect
nests of fish skin to reflect
the imperial smut of the sky.    
                                  I feel a samba roll
under my eyelids when flamingos stroll
oceanward at sundown and clap their stubs of wings
in gawky, rank, hierophantic posturings.

When the Lord God created the flamingos, He
fell into despondency. He knew
that roseate feathers on such skeletons
elicit incredulity  He gloomed
for days, obsessive as a poet who
discovers a covert love affair between
obstreperous syllables and then,
cracking grandeur from the egg of shame,
sets these
diametric desperadoes in a pas de deux.

Only in Miami is supreme
loneliness apparent in flamingo dawn.
The squalor of the place is cruelly pink.
There are pink curtains on the lousy shacks.
The impulse to adorn deepens the nakedness.
There, flamingos all the color of a bone
scavenge in vermillion stateliness.
Their pink flocks forage in that loneliness.”

“Summer brought fireflies in swarms.
They lit our evenings like dreams
we thought we couldn’t have.
We caught them in jars, punched
holes, carried them around for days.

Luminous abdomens that when charged
with air turned bright.  Imagine!
mere insects carrying such cargo,
magical caravans flickering beneath
low July skies. We chased them, amazed.

The idea! Those tiny bodies
pulsing phosphorescence.
They made reckless traffic,
signaling, neon flashes forever
into the deepening dusk.

They gave us new faith
in the nasty tonics of childhood-
pungent, murky liquids promising
shining eyes, strong teeth, glowing skin,
and we silently vowed to swallow ever after.

What was the secret of light?
We wanted their brilliance:
small fires hovering,
each tiny explosion
the birth of a new world.”

“My dog came back from the woods smelling of skunk, so
I gave him a good wash in the tub outside and things were
better. We took a walk down the street and met another dog,
a big one. They snarled at one another and then made their
peace. After a good walk we turned around and went back
home.  Robbie, the dog, went to sleep in his corner, and I
did some paperwork. I was going along just fine until there
was a knock on the door. I answered it and it was my ex-wife.
She said she had come for the dog and I said that wasn’t in
the agreement. She said she had bought the dog and it was
hers. I said Robbie loved me. He said a dog doesn’t know
what love is. ‘This is the dog’s home, his neighborhood,’ I
said. ‘He’ll adapt to his new home in a day,’ she said.
‘You don’t give this dog real feelings about anything,’ I
said. ‘He’s a dog, for Christ’s sake,’ she said. ‘He’s my dog.
He comes when I call him, he sits when I tell him to, he
fetches, he sleeps when I sleep.  We’re like married to each
other,’ I said. ‘And now he wants to divorce you,’ she said.
‘He does not. We’re happy together,’ I said. ‘Well, we’ll
be happy together, too,’ she said. ‘It would break his heart
to leave me,’ I said. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking
about,’ she said. I called Robbie. He didn’t come. I called
him again. ‘Where’s your dog now’ she said. ‘I’ll get
him,’ I said. I went and looked in the bedroom. He wasn’t
there. I looked in the study. He wasn’t there either. I
went in the guest bedroom. He wasn’t there. I came back into
the living room. ‘I can’t find him,’ I said. ‘He’s got to be
someplace,’ she said. ‘You didn’t let him out when you came
in, did you?’ I said. ‘Definitely not,’ she said. ‘Well, I
can’t find him in the house,’ I said. ‘Robbie!’ she called,
‘Robbie!’ He wasn’t anywhere. ‘What are we going to do?’
I said. ‘Let’s pray,’ she said. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Let’s
pray for Robbie to come back, it can’t hurt,’ she said. ‘Okay,
if you think it might help,’ I said. We closed our eyes and
held hands. ‘Heavenly Father, please bring our Robbie safely
back to us,’ she said. We opened our eyes and there was a
camel standing there. ‘Oh, no, you’ve made a mistake,’ I
said. ’I didn’t make a mistake. God did,’ she said. ‘Come
here, Robbie,’ I said. And the huge animal stepped nearer
and rubbed his snout on my shoulder just like Robbie always
did when he wanted to express his affection for me. ‘He’s
half yours,’ I said.”

Limen – Natasha Trethewey

“All Day I’ve listened to the industry
of a single woodpecker, worrying the catalpa tree
just outside my window.  Hard at his task.

his body is a hinge, a door knocker
to the cluttered house of memory in which
I can almost see my mother’s face.

She is there, again, beyond the tree,
its slender pods and heart-shaped leaves,
hanging wet sheets on the line—each one

a thin white screen between us. So insistent
is this woodpecker, I’m sure he must be
looking for something else—not simply

the beetles and grubs inside, but some other gift
the tree might hold.  All day he’s been at work,
tireless, making the green hearts flutter.”