Silence

　　I lifted the door lever and went outside to stand in the quiet. Then I leaped through the deep snow, through the woods, around the pond, and out to the road where Flora and Nickel's car had been. I stood looking down the road. The quiet was almost as loud as the noise of the wind.

　　The snow was high. No one had plowed. It was the longest stretch of white I'd ever seen——up and down the long road.

　　I listened, but there were no faraway sounds of cars or plow trucks.

　　Silence.

The Poet's Dog, P61-62
Patricia MacLachlan
ISBN 978-0-06-229262-9

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I Feel Different

　　"What are you thinking about?" I asked her.

　　"My youth," she said.

　　Nickel grinned.

　　"Like now?" he asked.

　　Flora shook her head.

　　"I feel different."

　　"You are different," I said. "You've been brave.You wrote a note and left it for your mother. You kept us in good food for nearly five days."

　　I thought of Sylvan's students, romping through life like puppies——young people trying to write their way into adulthood.

　　"Do you remember when I was born?" Flora asked Nickel.

　　"I do. I wanted a guinea pig."

　　"Do you remember when you are young?" Flora asked me.

　　"I'm not sure my memories are like yours. I remember Sylvan most because he gave me words for my memories. Before that I remember moments, but I had no words for them."

　　Flora lifted her shoulders and sighed.

　　"I think I feel different because I have worries. I never had worries before now."

The Poet's Dog, P55-56
Patricia MacLachlan
ISBN 978-0-06-229262-9

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Poignancy

　　"'Day three in the cabin during a horrific storm,'" Nickel read dramatically from his notebook. "'Flora is rummaging through the refrigerator like a hungry weasel, searching for something mysterious, and possibly poisonous.'"

　　Nickel wrote silently in his notebook everyday, and had just begun reading his view of our life in the cabin.

　　His writing is funny, sly, and some times poignant. Sylvan had taught me the word poignant.

　　"It may be the most important thing in poetry," Sylvan tells me. "Poignancy."

　　Sylvan would have said that Nickel had style.

The Poet's Dog, P36-37
Patricia MacLachlan
ISBN 978-0-06-229262-9

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Sometimes I Forget, too

　　In the night I got up once to push up the door lever with my nose and go outside into the wind.

　　Nickel raised his head.

　　"Where are you going?"

　　His voice sounded frightened.

　　"I'm going to pee," I said.

　　I heard Flora's sleepy, comforting voice in the dark.

　　"He's a dog," Flora said softly.

　　"Oh right," said Nickel. "I kept forgetting that."

　　I came back to my red rug next to Nickel.

　　His arm went round me again.

　　"Sometimes I forget, too," I said to Nickel.

The Poet's Dog, P20-21
Patricia MacLachlan
ISBN 978-0-06-229262-9

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Like Washed Apples

　　It is a windy afternoon. Sylvan's class of poets sit in a group. There is a fire in the fireplace. I lie on the red rug, listening. The students who want to be poets are eager and fresh, like washed apples. Sylvan and I are the only ones with gray, grizzled hair.

　　"They know so little about life," Sylvan whispers to me as he puts out plates of cookies and seltzer bottles.

　　"Maybe they just don't know what they know," I say, making Sylvan smile.

The Poet's Dog, P24
Patricia MacLachlan
ISBN 978-0-06-229262-9

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Words

　　I'm a dog. I should tell you that right away. But I grew up with words. A poet named Sylvan found me at the shelter and took me home. He laid down a red rug for me by the fire, and I grew up to the clicking of his keyboard as he wrote.

　　He wrote all day. And he read to me. He read Yeats and Shakespeare, Jmaes Joyce, Wordsworth, Natalie Babbitt, and Billy Collins. He read me Charlotte's Web, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Morning Girl, and my favorite story, Ox-Cart Man. So I saw how words follow one another and felt the comfort of them.

　　I understand words, but there are only two who understand me when I speak. Sylvan told me this.

　　"Poets and children," said Sylvan. "We are the same really. When you can't find a poet, find a child. Remember that."

The Poet's Dog, P3-4
Patricia MacLachlan
ISBN 978-0-06-229262-9

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