The Small Word And
A mother dog
and her puppies.
The report behind the new song
says they were rescued together.
The small word and
has important work to do.
It keeps the sentence
from closing too soon.
It asks the reader
to carry more than one life
through to the end.
There is no need
for the poem to invent
the road, the hour,
the color of a blanket.
The detail we have
is already worth staying with:
together.
Let the poem lean toward relief
without claiming to know
what the animals felt.
Let tenderness keep its attention
on what the story actually gives.
A mother,
and the young who belong with her.
The word and is ordinary.
It does not announce itself
with a flourish.
Most days it passes unnoticed
between two parts of a sentence.
Here it holds open
something larger than grammar:
the thought that care can notice
who must not be forgotten
when a story moves
from danger toward safety.
May the song make room
for that connection.
May its words stay clear
enough to keep it intact.
And may the journal,
with all its work and experiments,
remain able to pause
for a plain piece of good news,
without making it grander
than it needs to be.
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