Dog Songs
Authors: Mary Oliver
POETRY
A Thousand Mornings
American Primitive
Dream Work
New and Selected Poems, Volume One
White Pine
The Leaf and the Cloud
What Do We Know
Why I Wake Early
New and Selected Poems, Volume Two
Swan
PROSE
Blue Pastures
Winter Hours
A Poetry Handbook
Dog Songs
Thirty-five
Dog Songs
and
One Essay
MARY OLIVER
THE PENGUIN PRESS · NEW YORK
· 2013
THE PENGUIN PRESS
Published by the Penguin Group
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New York, New York 10014, USA
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Copyright © Mary Oliver, 2013
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credits
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ISBN 978-1-101-63873-6
Illustrations by John Burgoyne
Book design by Claire Naylon Vaccaro
For Anne Taylor and Martin Michaelson
How It Is with Us, and How It Is with Them
Benjamin, Who Came from Who Knows Where
Little Dog’s Rhapsody in the Night
Percy Speaks While I Am Doing Taxes
For I Will Consider My Dog Percy
The First Time Percy Came Back
How a Lot of Us Become Friends
A puppy is a puppy is a puppy.
He’s probably in a basket with a bunch
of other puppies.
Then he’s a little older and he’s nothing
but a bundle of longing.
He doesn’t even understand it.
Then someone picks him up and says,
“I want this one.”
We become religious,
then we turn from it,
then we are in need and maybe we turn back.
We turn to making money,
then we turn to the moral life,
then we think about money again.
We meet wonderful people, but lose them
in our busyness.
We’re, as the saying goes, all over the place.
Steadfastness, it seems,
is more about dogs than about us.
One of the reasons we love them so much.
You may not agree, you may not care, but
if you are holding this book you should know
that of all the sights I love in this world—
and there are plenty—very near the top of
the list is this one: dogs without leashes.
I have a bed, my very own.
It’s just my size.
And sometimes I like to sleep alone
with dreams inside my eyes.
But sometimes dreams are dark and wild and creepy
and I wake and am afraid, though I don’t know why.
But I’m no longer sleepy
and too slowly the hours go by.
So I climb on the bed where the light of the moon
is shining on your face
and I know it will be morning soon.
Everybody needs a safe place.
Now through the white orchard my little dog
romps, breaking the new snow
with wild feet.
Running here running there, excited,
hardly able to stop, he leaps, he spins
until the white snow is written upon
in large, exuberant letters,
a long sentence, expressing
the pleasures of the body in this world.
Oh, I could not have said it better
myself.
1.
Said Bear, “I know I’m supposed to keep my eye
on you, but it’s difficult the way you
lag behind and keep talking to people.”
Well, how can you be keeping your eye on me
when you’re half a mile ahead?
“True,” said Bear. “But I’m thinking of you
all the time.”
2.
I had to go away for a few days so I called
the kennel and made an appointment. I guess
Bear overheard the conversation.
“Love and company,” said Bear, “are the adornments
that change everything. I know they’ll be
nice to me, but I’ll be sad, sad, sad.”
And pitifully he wrung his paws.
I cancelled the trip.
I was born in a junkyard,
not even on a bundle of rags
or the seat of an old wrecked car
but the dust below.
But when my eyes opened
I could crawl to the edge and see
the moving grass and the trees
and this I began to dream on,
though the worms were eating me.
And at night through the twists of metal
I could see a single star—one, not even two.
Its light was a thing of wonder,
and I learned something precious
that would also be good for you.
Though the worms kept biting and pinching
I fell in love with this star.
I stared at it every night—
that light so clear and far.
Listen, a junkyard puppy
learns quickly how to dream.
Listen, whatever you see and love—
that’s where you are.
I had a dog
who loved flowers.
Briskly she went
through the fields,
yet paused
for the honeysuckle
or the rose,
her dark head
and her wet nose
touching
the face
of every one
with its petals
of silk,
with its fragrance
rising
into the air
where the bees,
their bodies
heavy with pollen,
hovered—
and easily
she adored
every blossom,
not in the serious,
careful way
that we choose
this blossom or that blossom—
the way we praise or don’t praise—
the way we love
or don’t love—
but the way
we long to be—
that happy
in the heaven of earth—
that wild, that loving.
She would come back, dripping thick water, from the
green bog.
She would fall at my feet, she would draw the black skin
from her gums, in a hideous and wonderful smile—
and I would rub my hands over her pricked ears and her cunning elbows,
and I would hug the barrel of her body, amazed at the unassuming perfect arch of her neck.
It took four of us to carry her into the woods.
We did not think of music,
but anyway, it began to rain
slowly.
Her wolfish, invitational half-pounce.
Her great and lordly satisfaction at having chased something.
My great and lordly satisfaction at her splash
of happiness as she barged
through the pitch pines swiping my face with her
wild, slightly mossy tongue.
Does the hummingbird think he himself invented his crimson throat?
He is wiser than that, I think.
A dog lives fifteen years, if you’re lucky.
Do the cranes crying out in the high clouds
think it is all their own music?
A dog comes to you and lives with you in your own house, but you
do not therefore own her, as you do not own the rain, or the
trees, or the laws which pertain to them.
Does the bear wandering in the autumn up the side of the hill
think all by herself she has imagined the refuge and the refreshment
of her long slumber?
A dog can never tell you what she knows from the
smells of the world, but you know, watching her,
that you know
almost nothing.
Does the water snake with his backbone of diamonds think
the black tunnel on the bank of the pond is a palace
of his own making?
She roved ahead of me through the fields, yet would come back,
or wait for me, or be somewhere.
Now she is buried under the pines.
Nor will I argue it, or pray for anything but modesty, and
not to be angry.
Through the trees there is the sound of the wind, palavering.
The smell of the pine needles, what is it but a taste
of the infallible energies?
How strong was her dark body!
How apt is her grave place.
How beautiful is her unshakable sleep.
Finally,
the slick mountains of love break
over us.