Playing With Puppies

A fellow blogger commented on my last post: “I order you to go play with puppies this instant!” I suspect there may be some implication here that recent Yoga for Cynics posts have, perhaps, indicated a somewhat introverted, depressed and/or generally out-there state of mind. Could be. As a shrink once said, after an hour in which I'd brilliantly subverted her every attempt at introducing a more positive outlook, “it’s rough inside your head!” Point taken.

And yet, alas, I have no puppies at hand. Nonetheless, here’s a picture of my good friend Fargo, who's moved to Colorado, so I don’t get to play with him much these days.
It's nearly impossible to do yoga around Fargo, and he's anything but a cynic. That has not, however, kept me from writing fragments of an epic poem about him, collectively known as the Fargo Cantos (imaginary gardens with real dogs in them), including the following:

Because I could not stop for Fargo—
he kindly jumped up –
and got mud all over my pants

and:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and Fargo—
He kinda ran back and forth between them, like a maniac.
And that has made all the difference

and who could forget:

What happens to a dog deferred?

Does he curl up
like a pillow on the couch?
Or growl and snarl
like Oscar the grouch?
Does he slobber on your knee
Like a leaky hose?
Or whine, bark and puke
right on your toes?
Maybe he just slumps down
on his furry butt

Or does he go nuts?

or:

Fargo! Fargo! Barking bright,
In the backyards of the night,
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

Apologies to Ezra Pound, Marianne Moore, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Langston Hughes, and William Blake. And thanks to April for the pic, and to Dano MacNamarrah for a lovely blog award that I can't figure out how to paste into this post (so it's in the sidebar).