The New Yorker magazine...it's my favorite, but some issues have absolutely NOTHING of interest to me. Other issues contain poetry that is so abstract and nonsensical, I can't see how the editor thought there'd be any popular appeal to it at all. And then, once in a while, she'll publish a poem that is so profound, I'm moved to tears. Here's one...it is meant to be in paragraph style just like it shows up here. (There are about a half dozen others that I think are worth writing out, if anyone is interested I will post them.)

The Promotion

I was a dog in my former life, a very good dog, and, thus, I was promoted to a human being. I liked being a dog. I worked for a poor farmer, guarding and herding his sheep. Wolves and coyotes tried to get past me almost every night, and not once did I lose a sheep. The farmer rewarded me with good food, food from his table. He may have been poor, but he ate well. And his children played with me, when they weren't in school or working in the field. I had all the love any dog could hope for. When I got old, they got a new dog, and I trained him in the tricks of the trade. He quickly learned, and the farmer brought me into the house to live with the family. I brought the farmer his slippers in the morning, as he was getting old, too. I was dying slowly, a little bit at a time. The farmer knew this, and would bring the new dog in to visit me from time to time. The new dog would entertain me with his flips and flops and nuzzles. And then one morning I just didn't get up. They gave me a fine burial down by the stream under the shade tree. That was the end of my being a dog. Sometimes I miss it so I sit by the window and cry. I live in a high-rise that looks out at a bunch of other high-rises. At my job I work in a cubicle and barely speak to anyone all day. This is my reward for being a good dog. The human wolves don't even see me. They fear me not.

-James Tate

-- Anonymous, September 21, 2002

Answers

That IS lovely, Shannon.........I actually can relate to that dog; feeling rather that way myself these days, back in the burbs, knowing not anymore where I really do belong.

Thank goodness most of us cannot remember our past lives!

-- Anonymous, September 22, 2002