The following poems are from Ori Z Soltes’ new collection of poems, My Life as a Dog: Poppy Poems. The author will be reading from the collection Thursday, January 16, 2025 at the Writer’s Center – more information and rsvp here.
Three: Dusk
When Poppy strolls through the neighborhood,
he sniffs to makes sure the air is good.
In the fall he smells the burning wood.
In the spring the earth is his nostril-food.
He tastes the grass in a summer mood,
and licks the snow—that is, he could
in the wintertime—although these days the weather’s rude
and doesn’t snow, although it should.
But his patrol as the apex dude,
at dawn and dusk on lawn and street—
through sun and hail and rain and sleet—
assures that nature doesn’t make us brood.
Seven: Poppy’s Sensibilities
Poppy stopped to sniff the air
to see if there was anything there.
He listened as the wind went by
to check above, along the sky.
He used his quite discerning taste
to gulp the mist without due haste
and felt to make sure all was good:
no tigers or bears coming out of the wood!
He didn’t bother to look, you see—
his eyes ain’t what they used to be,
but assured himself with his other senses
that offered him their joint consensus
that all is fine and comme il faut,
so that it was really safe to go,
and shnorted as only Poppy can:
we called him “shneezl” as he calmly ran
down the street and back to home.
As always he will simply come
back to where the morning started,
before returning so fully-hearted
from an adventure out there in the world
with its three-block radius through which he twirled
and did his senses all unfurl—
more careful than a two-legged boy or girl.
Seventeen: Poppy the Existentialist Canine
Poppy ploppy puddin’ n’ pie
pooped on the lawn and looked at the sky
and suddenly wondered just how high
the clouds were there above him.
He thought that the only way to know
would be first, to bark, to show
the people to whom he would need to go
for answers—they who love him—
that his query was very serious,
that he wasn’t merely curious
nor some puppy who acts imperious,
but thinks about white-flecked blueness.
He paused to reflect, stared at the woods
beyond where the lawn and the garden stood,
filled with smells that he knew were good,
from sweet September’s trueness.
Then he went inside the house,
his footfalls quiet as a mouse,
deciding that he must rouse
his dad from his fuzzy sleeping
to discuss this important matter
his Poppy thoughts not scattered
but focused in a perfect pattern
of Cartesian, Newtonian thinking,
and waited for his dad to be fully awake
to grab some juice with which to slake
his morning thirst before he raked
the leaves that had been falling
where Poppy’s cogitation, on the lawn,
had begun just then, before the dawn,
as he watched a deer and her baby fawn
cavorting in the forest.
His dad used his muscles to rake those leaves,
their nascent colors helped him not grieve
for summer’s end. And when he believed
it was time to take a minute’s rest
Poppy barked to ask the new day’s question
lightly, so as not to be a pest on
this scintillating sunny morn:
how high really is that sky?
His dad paused for reflection
and stroked his chin with circumspection
choosing careful words from the selection
of possibilities, as he looked in Poppy’s eyes
and answered with calm and passion
to his dog’s extraordinary ration
of intelligence (far beyond the fashion
of ordinary canine query)
about the heavens way up there
that seemed to frame the very air
with those puffy things from who knows where
—a question that is truly very
intellective in its form
that Poppy raised on this Sunday morn
that somehow in his mind was born
as he did the day’s first business.
His dad at last responded
in a manner that corresponded
to God from in the whirlwind
to Job who had not sinned
when he wondered about innocent humans
who while the world around is bloomin’
might suffer so unfairly:
in the universe might there not be
an answer? And Poppy’s dad looked down
into Poppy’s eyes so brown
and with neither smile nor frown—
as if he and his dog had a pact
to wrestle with the universe
when things were better and things were worse
and to understand from the very first
that the sky and suffering are the sorts of things
that even if every dog could sing
and men were sprouting outstretched wings
we cannot know, and that’s a fact.
Dr. Ori Z Soltes teaches theology, art history, philosophy, and political history at Georgetown University. He has also taught across diverse disciplines for many years at The Johns Hopkins University, Cleveland State University, Case Western Reserve University, Siegel College in Cleveland, and other colleges and universities. Soltes has lectured at dozens of museums across the country, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian Institution, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. He has been interviewed for a score of programs on archaeological, religious, art, literary, and historical topics on CNN, the History Channel, and Discovery Channel, and he hosted a popular series on Ancient Civilizations for middle school students. For seven years, Dr. Soltes was Director and Chief Curator of the B’nai B’rith Klutznick National Jewish Museum, where he created over 80 exhibitions focusing on aspects of history, ethnography, and contemporary art. He has also curated diverse contemporary and historical art exhibits at other sites, nationally and internationally. As Director of the National Jewish Museum, he co-founded the Holocaust Art Restitution Project and has spent more than 20 years researching and consulting on the issue of Nazi-plundered art. Ori has authored or edited scores of books, articles, exhibit catalogues, and essays on diverse topics. He leads annual study tours to museums and art and archaeological sites throughout Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa. When not wandering around the world, he resides in the Washington, DC area with his wife, the film-maker Leslie Shampaine.
The featured image in this post is “Poppy 4”, pencil on paper, 2023, by Ori Z. Soltes, re-printed by permission.
