Speak Dog

"Mom are you a poet?" Olive asks, as we walk the trail that leads to "the big tree", one of the few remaining old growth Spruce on the lower mountain, one that survived the loggers' blades.

The tree stands wider than my outstretched arms, but with no crown, be-headed by a storm long before we lived here on the edge of Foundry Peak.

"Yes," I answer, surprising myself by not qualifying my affirmative statement with downplaying words--well kinda, sorta, not a real one. 

I just out and claim the identity of poet on this cloud-free evening in September as the sky turns rose: Yes, I'm a poet.

"That's cool," Olive says, as we walk through a tunnel of Salmonberry bushes until the trail widens, where the moss and ferns spread, and before us stands "the big tree", saved for its deformity.

A survivor when so many healthy trees fell.

Rejected for lumber, the tree remained to watch the Alders fill in the spaces where the giant Spruce once reined, now a host to fungi as it slowly decays, a grandmother to the growing evergreen that re-line the lower leg of this mountain where my family carves a home.

 

Olive turns and looks at me: "That means you can speak Dog. Only poets and kids can understand dogs."

 

 

 

"Sure," I answer, accepting this power right along with poetry, the ability to commune with canines.

Because of course poets and kids can speak Dog.

And Tree.

Comments

[Paul Ongtooguk]

Speaking dog and seal are close.

[Christy]

I'll have to start communing with seals:)

[Linda Medsker]

I'm so glad you can speak Dog! And Tree. And Kid. That's quite an accomplishment, poet Christy!