Originally appeared in The Bark: the Dog Culture Magazine, September 2019. The Bark editors placed in on the inside back cover. They omitted the epigraph by Mary Oliver, which was disappointing. But then again, The Bark has a circulation of over 200,000, so that’s easily the largest audience I’ll ever reach with one of my poems. Click here to see it on The Bark, but the original with epigraph is below:
Asta Encounters the Divine in Big Laurel Creek
The dog would remind us of the pleasures of the body with its graceful physicality, and the acuity and rapture of the senses, and the beauty of forest and ocean and rain and our own breath. – Mary Oliver, “Dog Talk”
Sun soaked and sparkling
Asta somehow knows, sipping
Deep the light-filled creek,
Shimmering, shining,
So numinous below. The
Ripples softly speak
Of this bright altar
Of this holy flow, of this
Old dog’s raptured glow.
Asta at Big Laurel Creek