Four Poems About Joy, Belonging, and the Holiness of Ordinary Days.
Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening, baking, sitting with a dog, all are meditations. - May Sarton
Preface: How Charlie Found Us
We brought Charlie home on a cold December afternoon - December 7, 2024, to be exact.
He came up from Missouri by way of Woburn, Massachusetts, through a small but radiant group called Happy Life Beagle Rescue. They’re the kind of people who believe love is a practical thing: paperwork and late-night phone calls, long drives, blankets in the back seat, and the quiet conviction that every dog deserves a chance at warmth.
Their kindness was steady, unhurried, and complete. By the time Charlie’s leash passed from their hands to ours, it felt less like an adoption and more like a relay of faith.
He was all ribs and rhythm then; tail wagging, eyes bright, already forgiving the world.
We didn’t know yet that he would become the household’s clock, philosopher, and jester.
We only knew that something good had entered our lives and refused to sit still.
Since that day, Charlie has turned the ordinary into a curriculum of joy. He has taught us patience through puddles, awe through snowfall, gratitude through the steady thump of his tail against the floor.
Each poem that follows; winter, spring, summer, and fall...is a field note from that ongoing lesson:
that love, attention, and laughter are the real weather of a home.
So this small collection is for Charlie,
for The Steady One who shares every walk and every apple, and for the kind souls at Happy Life Beagle Rescue who remind the rest of us what rescue really means:
to see life where others see loss,
and to deliver it safely into open arms.
Winter
Charlie and the First Snow
It came overnight,
soft, unannounced,
a silence draped across the yard
like breath holding its own secret.
Charlie saw it first.
He pressed his nose to the windowpane,
fogging it with wonder.
The world had changed,
and he, being dog enough,
wanted proof.
Outside, the air had that faint new hush,
as if even time paused
to listen for its own heartbeat.
Charlie stepped forward,
one paw at a time,
each print a small confession
to joy.
The snow took him by surprise -
it gave way underfoot,
then rose to meet him again,
the way grace sometimes does.
He sneezed,
shook his ears,
sniffed a twig half-buried in frost,
and barked once,
not at anything in particular,
but for the pleasure
of hearing sound against stillness.
The world glittered.
The fences wore halos.
Every branch bowed
under the lightest of burdens.
I stood at the door,
coffee in hand,
watching him trace his own sermon
through the whitened yard.
By the time he came back in,
his paws carried the scent of winter,
and a few wild flakes clung
to his fur like small benedictions.
He looked at me -
and in that look was everything:
a question,
a greeting,
a wordless thank-you
for the miracle of now.
Spring
In Rain, With Charlie
This morning, rain fell softly,
not in anger,
but with the patience of something ancient.
Still, we went - Charlie and I -
down Kenosha Street, where the maples lean like old monks,
and onto Phillips Street, which held the hush
of a hymn not yet sung.
Charlie, his ears swinging like small flags of joy,
tugged the leash with a kind of holy certainty,
as if the rain belonged to him,
and he to it.
Puddles rose like small silver altars.
He splashed them without repentance.
At the corner of Lauren and Mountain,
the world smelled of wet bark and earth’s breath.
Nothing hurried. Nothing apologized.
Charlie didn’t mind the rain...
he seemed made for it.
As though water could pass through him
and leave only more dog behind...
more life, more zest, more now.
By the time we reached home,
the sky was still weeping gently,
but he shook himself with the fervor
of something wild and joyful,
a storm inside a storm.
The back porch turned into a pond,
my hands already searching for the old blue towel.
Then,
damp but unconcerned,
he curled into himself on the rug
as though he’d walked not just the streets
but the entire, beloved world,
and now,
his only task:
to dream it all again.
Summer
Charlie and the Long Summer Evening
The heat was leaving slowly -
not gone,
just drifting upward into trees.
The sky, a wide bowl of amber,
held its breath.
Charlie wandered the yard,
his tail tracing lazy half-circles
through the dusk.
The world had quieted...
mowers done,
children called inside,
the day’s work folded away.
Fireflies rose from the grass
like tiny lanterns
set loose by forgiving hands.
Charlie watched them,
ears high,
then followed their slow waltz
with the solemnity
of someone attending a service.
He sniffed the air;
clover, heat,
a far-off grill,
and something sweet I couldn’t name.
Whatever it was,
he took it in whole,
as though scent itself were a prayer.
The Steady One read on the porch,
a fan turning its small rhythm of wind.
I sat on the steps,
barefoot,
a glass sweating beside me.
No one spoke.
We didn’t need to.
When the first stars came,
Charlie sighed,
stretched himself full length
on the cooling earth,
and looked back toward the house;
his kingdom,
his people,
his evening’s peace.
A single firefly
lit on his nose.
He didn’t flinch.
He just let it glow there,
a brief crown of summer -
until it flew.
Fall
Charlie in Fall
The maples have begun to speak in color,
and Charlie listens,
nose to wind, ears tilted like leaves themselves,
tuned to whatever it is
the season is trying to say.
The air smells of woodsmoke and turned soil.
He moves slower now,
but only because there’s more to notice...
a squirrel’s lost ambition,
a trail half-buried in gold.
He snuffles each leaf
as though it remembers a secret,
then sneezes - once, twice -
and looks at me,
as if to say the world is both funny and infinite.
I nod.
Because it is.
At home, The Steady One opens the door,
her laugh as familiar as the porch light’s hum.
Charlie trots past, tracking half the forest behind him.
He shakes...
and the room fills with October.
Later, he dreams under the window,
feet twitching,
tail giving one last wag
against the quiet.
Outside, the wind rearranges what’s left of the day,
and for a long, slow moment,
the house breathes
like something very alive
and very content.
Reflection
The Way the World Begins Again
Every day with him feels like a restart;
the same walk, the same street,
and yet somehow, new.
Maybe that’s the secret I’ve been missing all along:
life doesn’t ask for progress,
only attention.
Charlie never worries about the future.
He knows when the knife comes out,
an apple will follow.
He knows the door will open,
and someone he loves
will be waiting.
If faith means anything at all,
it might just mean this -
to meet each morning
as if you’ve never lived before,
to trust that joy will find you again
in something small and shining,
like a slice of fruit,
or the sound of paws
on wet leaves.
And maybe, when the day comes
that I’m gone,
the world will keep teaching this lesson...
to whoever’s left,
and to whatever listens -
how to love
the ordinary
as if it were
the first day of the world.
About This Work
“A Beagle and the Apple” began not as a project but as a moment. Each poem grew from something simple: the sound of a knife slicing fruit, the rain on Kenosha Street, the rhythm of paws in fallen leaves. Over time, these small pieces became a calendar of gratitude — one for each season of living beside a creature who knows how to be wholly present.
Each poem lives in a particular light:
Winter - the season of stillness, patience, and trust.
Rain - the baptism of the ordinary.
Summer - the communion of home.
Fall - the abundance before rest.
Together they form a modest prayer - not in words, but in wonder.
Author’s Note
When we adopted Charlie, I thought we were saving a dog. What I learned was that he was saving something in us...a tenderness, a capacity for quiet joy that the pace of modern life too often erodes.
Happy Life Beagle Rescue, whose volunteers ferry dogs across states and storms to find them love, restored my faith in gentle persistence. Their work reminds me that the sacred is never abstract. It’s found in the hand that reaches, the leash that waits, the apple shared.
This collection is an offering of thanks; for their compassion, and for the small, miraculous ordinary that fills our days.
Afterword
There is no great theology in these poems, only affection - the kind that finds holiness in an apple slice and salvation in a wagging tail.
If faith has a sound, it’s the crunch of joy between teeth.
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden. - Milan Kundera
2025
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