Another small dog poem

We breathe the same fresh air,

my dog and I, or breathe it stale;

we sigh the same, the difference

only being in the size of sighs;

we walk the same hard road, the

road is ours, not his or mine;

and when I take a nap, and on the

couch lie long, he lies beside, and

fits himself behind my knees,

warming me, or maybe I warm him. 

Our small dog, who died in 2025, aged 15. 

I've written a few dog poems, one simply called Dog, and another, A Small Dog Considers Being Rubbed...and a number of years ago I wrote six songs to other people's poems about dogs. I don't have permission from the authors to use the words for these songs, as yet, so they've not been published. However I'll link to the poems online for anyone who's interested. 

Dogs – words by Aaron Kramer
Mother doesn’t want a dog – words by Judith Viorst
Three Dog Night  – words by Faith Shearin, 
In the Moment – words by Maxine Kumin
Choosing a Dog – words by William Stafford 

Retriever - Faith Shearin 

Melodramatic Sestina

You never quite know where the Sestina form will take you.  The following over-the-top example shows what happens when you let it take the lead.  

Melodramatic Sestina

First glance she sent him with a sigh,

responded he with cheerful gleam,

she flicked an olive in his lap,

pretended she was sipping wine,

and fluttered lashes black and false

while he blushed high, with pounding heart.

He faniced he had won her heart

with little more than groan and sigh;

he failed to note that she was false

to her table mate, whose eyes a-gleam,

was more than sloshed on mid-priced wine,

while food was dropping in his lap.

Taking the olive from his lap

our hero ate, stared at her false

grey eyes with longing, but like whines

from the throat of a slaughtered goat, his sighs

stopped in their tracks at the sudden gleam

in the lady’s eyes as her table mate’s fals-

etto voice exposed his lady’s false-

hoods (brushing food from off his lap);

they’d dull of any man his gleam,

they’d break of any man his heart

and with a deep and painful sigh

in her face he splashed his dregs of wine.

The lady screamed, began to whine

in notes that diners round knew false.

The two men rose, with each a sigh

(dropping their napkins from their laps)

plunged a steak knife in the heart

of the other; blood soon dulled the gleam

of the steel.  Out of their eyes, the gleam

soon went while plates, forks, chairs, wine

toppled; unfamiliar fear gripped the heart

of the lady, whose wanton, false

deceptive acts fell in her lap.

Appalled, she crumpled with a sigh. 

envoi

Don’t diminish the gleam in living the false,

spilling Life’s wine in Fate’s shallow lap;

to splinter the heart, start with a sigh.