Filed under: Ordinary
I figure that it is a ‘blog’ thing to title your blog creatively and mysteriously. So I have gone for the creative title, and decided to opt for less mystery: here is where “Three Sumach-Red Dogs I Run With” comes from:
Valley Song by Carl Sandburg
Your eyes and the valley are memories.
Your eyes fire and the valley a bowl.
It was here a moonrise crept over the timberline.
It was here we turned the coffee cups upside down.
And your eyes and the moon swept the valley.
I will see you again to-morrow.
I will see you again in a million years.
I will never know your dark eyes again.
These are three ghosts I keep.
These are three sumach-red dogs I run with.
All of it wraps and knots to a riddle:
I have the moon, the timberline, and you.
All three are gone–and I keep all three.
—
(1918 - from Cornhuskers)
I have been astonished for years about the depth of this poem. It is about the entirety of our existence, past and future and present, so incredibly nostalgic…
And then he throws in that phrase… “These are three sumach-red dogs I run with”
Such an incredibly vivid image, and yet, I’m not sure what he means — I just feel what he means. I know the depth of color of sumach, and I know what it is like to run with dogs… What a vivid and powerful image…
This is the way our life goes — we run with sumach-red dogs.
So this blog will be a description of what I see, the dogs I run with, the coffee cups turned upside down.
And everything wraps and knots to a riddle…
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