A few years ago, on my first trip back to Portland since we had moved to NC, I stopped in at Powell’s and picked up a copy of Jim Harrison’s “After Ikkyū".” Since I was flying with limited space in my backpack, it fit the criteria of being small enough to toss in my bag and not take up too much space for the return trip. As luck would have it, I contracted COVID the next day and through many twists-and-turns, found myself quarantining in the back wing of my in-law’s house in Mississippi.
Between sleeping like a log for hours and randomly trying to pay attention to my laptop, I ended up going through the book front-to-back several times. Since then, it’s become a close friend - I keep it on a shelf immediately behind my desk, so I can grab it and dip in whenever I need a poetry plunge in the middle of the work day.
I keep coming back specifically to the poem “Return to Yesenin” and these lines:
To be frank, I’d rather live to feed my dogs
knowing the world says no in ten thousand ways
and yes in only a few. The dogs don’t need another
weeping Jesus on the cross of Art, strumming
the scars
to keep them alive, tending them in a private
garden as if our night-blooming tumors were fruit.
Harrison was a notable and devoted dog lover, and I also keep a collection of his essays which often highlight his deep affection for and companionship with his many dogs on the same shelf, placed companionably next to Mary Oliver’s “Dog Songs.”
When I find that I’m getting too wrapped up in myself - fixated on a conflict at work, worrying about some future outcome that I cannot control, maybe recalling choices made that led me into various forks in career paths, on the way to destinations I wouldn’t necessarily choose, I remind myself to feed the dogs. It helps that I have three dogs who really do need to be fed - who genuinely don’t have a single thought about whether my job title has changed, whether I have a challenging business call on my calendar, or what new visions of the future, backed by tech oligarchs, are being pushed into my feeds. They are much more interested in walking our woods, attempting to catch squirrels, playing with my son, and above all (for one in particular) - getting their next meal.
I take it as a reminder to get back to ground - recenter myself in the context of what matters across time while also being very much aware of the moment itself - to “come into the peace of wild things,” as the recently-departed Wendell Berry wrote, and “rest in the grace of the world and [be] free.”
In fact, I think I’ll go do that now.