Lytton is an amazing dog. Somehow he managed to pull a bag of rawhide chews off the top of the frigo while Benoît and I were out shopping last night. 
I didn’t realise this until I went to give him his nightly chew. There were none left. He didn’t appear in the least bit repentant either. To look at him last night, you’d think he had been starving for days.
In the seven years I have known him, I have forgiven him much because he listens avidly to me. This morning I read a bunch of poems to him. He curled up beside me – he seems to like it best when I try out different voices. He has the most amazing and kind eyes that you could ever hope to encounter.
Today I read an entire book of poetry by Helen Humphreys to him, entitled, The Perils of Geography (okay it’s a short book). If you’ve never read anything by Helen Humphreys, you are missing out on a wonderful author. Although Canadian, she isn’t one of the authors we hear about here. It’s a shame … she wrote The Lost Garden which is one of my favourite books of all time. If push came to shove, I would have to say that, bar none, it is the best gardening book that I have ever read.
This is a poem that spoke to me on this cold winter afternoon. It is Here:
falls, what it touches.
Gardens on
the quiet streets,
when afternoon is soft
as breathing, slow
as slow as this.
Certainty of colour,
the sharp surprise of
blue under the beeches. The
open mouths of roses.
A small collapse
of the familiar, a shift
as soft as this.
The slow rise of love.
Memory of someone’s face,
a sure and sudden gift.
On an afternoon as quiet,
as quiet as this, the
way the light falls,
what it touches.
Kate smudges in earth, paint and life 
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