Walking a Poem

By Carson W. Bennett
Wordsworth would agreeit is poetry weather today. The forecast of my mind is
a sunny, clear, and it is still the cool of the morning. Days like today make me happy to
be a writer. Its not always sunshine and rainbow bridges connecting me to inspiration
from on high sliding down Jacobs ladder--some days, dark clouds cover the sun and a
blizzard blocks all the roads, and I am cooped up alone like one Emily Dickenson or
your choice of Byrons brooding heroes. If the weather represents the writers mood,
then the actual process of writing the poem is more like a morning routine. This, for me,
is like walking a dogthe poem tugging in the lead, dragging my slow mental steps
behind it with its lifeforce thats alive, alert, and sniffing.
The question is not, when will I walk the dog? but rather, which dog will I walk
today? My house has become a poetry pound where dozens of stray poems come off the
streets seeking refuge in my mind until I can find them a new home in another house
this time a publishing house. The stray poems follow a well-marked trail (from fire
hydrants, garden gnomes, tree trunks, and yellow patches in the snow) to the house of
the neighborhood poet in residenceme, a kind owner they always hope will let them
inside his mental mansion, and give them a new name, feed, wash, and scratch
underneath the collar with its Title and my own name on the tag. Some k-9 guests stick
around no more than an hour, others weeks, and there are the few poem puppies who
never seem to grow up, or leave. I dont have the heart to kick any out because when I
pass by my porch window, there is another stray poem scratching through the screen
door to the glass..another stray, homeless image, outcast and whimpering and shivering
in the cold.

I like mutts the most: free-verse poems; but I dont always choose so the various
breeds of poems in my house fluctuates constantly. Purebreds, are form based poems
like sonnets, terza rima, ext. seem standoffish and snooty with their show-dog posture;
they sit upon their small square pedestals, fearing to play with the masses that might
ruffle their ribbons, so they sit with impeccable form, wagging their tales to the
precession rhythms, and barking in predictable rhymes. On the other hand, the mutt is
marbled in style and full of life; with these poems I can feel free wrestling them to the
ground and then scratch their multicolored bellies: a free style of play, love, and tonguelapping joy.
The backburner poems never leave the backyard of my mind, penned outside.
They are the skinny ones, malnourished due to neglect. Sometimes they bark to get my
attention, but when I am too preoccupied getting the kibble for the other dozen dogs,
these poems begin digging in the garden, turning their noses and paws a light brown
color in the flower patch. Oh, and how can I forget the barking, barking, barking up at
the oak tree; there are no mental shock collars in case you were wondering, so there they
go, vigilantly guarding me against the squirrels imminent surprise attack scheduled for
two oclock in the morningevery morning, that howling call is what forces me out of
bed in the middle of the night to grab the nearest pen and pad of paper and to write.
Most poems I pick up off the street. Though its true that some just come to me in
a flash ringing the front doorbell, more often then not, it is me searching them out. Once
I started looking, they appear at work, in my neighborhood, .I have found a poem puppy
balancing in the nest of a bewildered robin while another was at a classical concert,
hired by the band for its tail as a living metronome. Golden retriever poems are most

likely found hiding under the desks in my creative writing class, while the more daring
ones put on a dress shirt with a yellow paisley tie and do their best to write their name
on the chalk board and call the class to order. Some silently stalk me and wag their way
onto the bed at the foot of the bed or coiled on a pillow. The loyal poems that silently
follow and wait, are the ones which cause me to tense up or let out a scream when I find
their twin-moon, reflective eyes staring at me in the dark. Some dogs scare me. I try my
best to keep them stowed away in the loft but I can still hear them scratching the rafters
above me, like rats in the attic.
Standing by the door I whistled and waited for the poem of the day to appear. I
saw the thick furs, thick build, and droopy eyes of the St. Bernard come to greet me. My
sigh was audible as I took the few steps over to the dog, recognizing that todays walk
would be a bit more of an exercise than I hoped. A St. Bernard is not like the comewhen-you-call, cheerfully dumb, Labrador. The strange looking wiener-translation
poem, the stubby-legged yet chipper imagist beagle, and he didnt seem like the
bloodhound or other hunting dogs who are out searching for a man paused for a
moment in the New England woods on a winter evening or on a silent road somewhere
picking which divergent his path to take with a sigh. The St. Bernard poem was
definitely not like the tiny, feisty, one-liner chiwawas. The preachy, short-tempered
terrier and the guard dog of morals, the German Sheppard, were nowhere to be seen.
This thing is the power house of the poems, the Mac daddy of muscle, senses so fine he
could locate and rescue a reader entombed five feet below the snow.
Well, I said to myself, a jog up the canyon will be lovely today. Now lets see if
this brute will give it a go. Well, he leashed easily enough and eagerly held his nose at
the crack of the front door. All I had to do was turn the doorknob and pull inward an

inch and that was enough. The poem was out to explore the brisk summer morning as
mist steamed through its jaws. The sun was still behind the mountains as we began our
walk and turned up the street. The idea of taking a moderately paced jog up to the
mountain stream, and enjoy the seclusion and majestic beauty in the summer dawn
brought a smile to my face, but the poem had other plans. Actually, to say it had other
plans gives the beast to much credit, a poem is clueless, but anything but senseless. It is
sensefull beast of sights, smells, echoing the world and instinct. He wasnt planning to
catch the teasing whiff of another dogs territory exhibited on the corner patch of grass;
or a curious encounter with another jogger and his dog. The St. Bernard poem wasnt
planning to see Mrs. Krantzs calico cat turn around the corner, meet eyes for a moment
then bolt. Then came the chase of instinctthe trigger moment.
The frightening pulse when I wanted to continue north down the street towards
the canyon but was violently and unexpectedly changed directions and paces, chasing a
cat through parts of the neighborhood of my mind I have never explored. Lurching
behind the St. Bernard I was the helpless passenger on a reckless train-of-thought
conducted by the senseless cat that had no presubscribed vision of manifest destiny, but
was instead laying the linking rail tracks yard by yard. Zigzagzagging and curving trip
was full speed ahead, no stops. Scenic sights to my left and right I noticed the alley inbetween Wordsworths and Gerard Manley Hopkins daisy patches bickering which is
the brightest, Seamus Heaney blackberry patch while Billy Collins is throwing in ropes
to go waterskiing. Then there was Walter and Iara from Brazil, still unpacking their
coias, chimarrao, and photo albums of their family. Onward past the beautiful tour of
the Miltons hellish backyard patio, Sir Thomas Mores mansion utopia complete with

pool, the St. Bernard Express steamed through the back bushesscratching my face and
knocking off my glasses.
Letting go of the leash, there I was lying facedown in the dewed grass, finally
stopped. I had to feel for my glasses before I could begin to guess where I was. I had
never been there before. The poem had decided to give up on the cat and started up
some small talk with the garden gnomes and bunnies in the garden. Panting on the grass
I realized how I had planned to hike up the mountain to see the dawn unfold upon the
valley this morning, but instead I watched the dawn break over the empty lawn of a
strangers backyard. I blamed the St. Bernard for his crazy antics and walked over to the
poem fuming. Stupid poemutt you arent cooperating, lets get back on track, I yelled
under my breath as I reached out my hand to grip the poems collar and drag the beast
back to the street. Any attempt to force a poem back to the writers presubscribed path is
just as easy as trying to force a St. Bernard to do anything against its will. I dug my heels
into the soft grass and leaned all my weight in the opposite direction but to my
frustration the St. Bernard stood and slowly walked to the edge of the yard. No. No. Bad
Bernard. Bad. Stop! Lets get out of here before you get me in any more trouble, I
pleaded, but the poem nosed its way through the brush on the opposite edge where we
entered. Still holding tightly to the collar I was dragged though the leaves and surprised
by the sight. Before me was a beautiful mountain stream, nestled secretly behind this
strangers yard. The scene was magnified by the new morning light falling thought the
leaves and the poem didnt wait, stunned like me, to walk to the waters edge and take a
drink.
Before I even stepped out the door that morning I thought I had a charted route
where X marked the spot. Even though I wasnt exactly sure where I was, or how I got

there, I was stunned by the Eden I stumbled into. I guess that is the thing with poems,
they are alive and have the instinct to follow the trigger moment, something that a
practiced poet lovesthe thrill of going somewhere unexpected on his walk with a poem.
Just a word of warning, be prepared to for the enlightening yet awkward moments when
we intrude past common fences, and catch William Blake and Mrs. Blake acting out
Paradise Lost with fruit, garden snakes, adorned only in their bare human glory.