Day 17 & Pic and a Word #309: Dogs

I could write a poem with a line for every dog I’ve ever met…

Prompt 17: “This is a fun one – it’s a prompt developed by the comic artist Lynda Barry, and it asks you to think about dogs you have known, seen, or heard about, and then use them as a springboard into wherever they take you.“

Other dogs

I could write lines and lines on dogs in my life.
All my childhood dogs that made me wish for one
   which didn’t happen for almost 30 years.
The dogs from the song grandma sang to me before sleep 
   (coupled with “Und der Flak macht bum bum”)
about the dogs of her siblings which we regularly visited, 
and they all loved me because it was me to give them the bones 
and leftover meat which we had been saving all week 
   in a plastic bag in the fridge.
The dogs of my first school friend, all female, 
   who took my early fear of dogs away.
The dogs of my friends who I thought were the luckiest 
   in the world for having them.

Until finally
Chance took over and threw a newborn puppy litter of ten 
   in our trash.
We kept three and raised them by the bottle and then we kept the 
   introvert.
Lines of dogs in dog school which we, the introverts, hated so.
That bitch who made holes in his neck so that we could see 
   how thick his skin really was.
All the millions of dogs met on dog-walks.

But first I’d need to remove bestia off my feet
and explain.

I kept the poem relatively short but in photos there are more or less all the dogs I’ve seen in the last nine years with, as the last in the gallery, our first dog Žak – the introvert – who grew up to be 13 and left us in 2012.

As it is, I post photos of our present bestia all the time – there he is permanently on top of my blog in my parents’ garden in Piran – so he says he can understand the multitude of other dogs in this post. Especially since he got lots of lamb today. He says Easter is his favourite holiday.

It just so happens that he wrote my 2019 poem on this day. There it is below in the memories. Click on “Read all” to read it in full.

Happy Easter and don’t drop your eggs. (It’s a play on words. Bojana will understand – neka ti jaja dobro ispadnu!)

• 

  On the road in Tuscany.

• 

  Montalto di Castro.

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  Also Montalto. This and the previous one didn’t make a sound.

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  She and her owners kindly welcomed us to her garden in Rome near the Appian Way.

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  On the ferry to Isola del Giglio. Lots of dogs on the ferry even though they have to pay too.

• 

  Also there.

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  In the hills of Sabina.

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  In Orbetello.

• 

  Look again, at HIS chest now. By Lake Bracciano.

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  This one grabbed my heart. In Saline di Tarquinia.

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  In Monteverde, Rome.

• 

  Another quiet one right there.

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  Coming closer to home. This one strolls around by himself.

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  Hi, there, “pastore tedesco”, as Italians call this breed.

• 

  This one rarely stops barking even though we pass here daily.

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  These two often come over. There is the third too. At first we thought that our bestia will grow up into one of these, Maremma sheepdogs.

• 

  My friend. I still don’t know her name.

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  Bestia’s friend Buddy but then he moved away. No dog friends to play now.

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  Only an occasional sparing partner. In Porto Ercole.

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  A hop to Slovenia now. Lexi of Petra and Marjan. She visited us in Tuscany already. Her owner is in the memories below.

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  Another friend’s dog visitor at our card tournament. She didn’t play.

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  We met her in Piran and of course, she is Italian and her name is Roma.

• 

  Tili’s furry friend Manči (left).

• 

  Joy of friends Igor and Gabi.

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  He is a sweetheart. Near my parents’ house in Ljubljana.

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  Žak, still very young, eating the daily Večer, for which my father wrote at the start and end of his working years.

In response to Patrick Jennings’ Pic and a Word Challenge #309: Lines

The last day in my NaPoWriMo history

2018: To the sea

In the next compartment
another family of four
travelling companions.
And then another.
I believe we have peopled
the entire carriage with our friends.
The ride will take
the whole evening, night and morning.
Then the ferry.
Then the fishing boat.
Then the village.
Our mountain looks down.
Crazy Slovenians are back. (Read all.)

2019: A woman and a dog

She is nice, I suppose, 
in a humanly way.
 
Alright then.
 
I’m not going to tell her 
about that wolf 
and how he peed on our gate. 

Read all.

2020: 341-163

One phone for the family of four.
On alternate weeks classes fall after lunch.
You don’t want the phone to wake you.
But it does. Repeatedly.
Every morning: Riiiing! 
Bolt from yours into the living room. 
Pick up the receiver.
“GRAMEX!”
“No, it is not! Stop calling here!”
*
It’s my second or third visit to my ex’s place. 
I spot a pack of his old business cards.
Big letters spell:
GRAMEX.
Underneath there is a number. 
It looks like ours.
Only one little digit wrong, the last one.
All those people were calling him early, too early. 
By fifteen years.

Read the second story.

2021: Moon Concentration (a cento in two parts)

Johnny Moon dreams in class.
Tonight's the night 
he's going to jump the moon.
The moon was yellow, 
and a song was sung.
But we lost little John 
as the moon struck one.

My sister killed her baby 
cause she couldn’t afford to feed it 
and we’re sending people to the moon.
No hot water, no toilets, no lights 
but Whitey's on the moon.

(Read all and see the moon.)

This day in my blogging history

• 

  2014: Greetings from the land of blues and greens.

• 

  2014: Ground Zero, by Michael Dransfield (Australia):

  Wake up
  look around
  memorise what you see
  it may be gone tomorrow
  everything changes. Someday
  there will be nothing but what is remembered
  there may be no-one to remember it.
  Keep moving
  wherever you stand is ground zero
  a moving target is harder to hit.

• 2014: One from 1977

• 

  2015: Look who is coming! When the first prize of our tournament was the train ticket to Tuscany, but then – after she won – she drove up with own car and husband like the queen.

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  2016: Catpotting

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  2017: Three wisdom windows:

  If you would avoid all fools go into a dense forest and there refrain from gazing into still pools. ~Austin O’Malley