In this week’s poem, Denise Pendleton shares the tale of a holiday, a strange dog and an ache of separateness. I love this poem’s clarion gaze and concern for the creature out in the cold, and I also love how clear the speaker’s difficult self-knowledge: for all the watchers’ care, they are inside, while the stray is out.

Pendleton holds an MFA in poetry from Washington University and is a recipient of The Jinx Walker Poetry Prize of the Academy of the American Poets. Her poems have appeared in a variety of online and print publications, including Northwest Review, Kerning and the American Sports Poems Anthology. Pendleton returned in 2006 to the small town in Midcoast where she was raised, and where she coordinates the local literacy program.

Poets, please note that submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. Deep Water is especially eager to share poems by Black writers, writers of color, Indigenous writers, LGBTQ+ writers and other underrepresented voices. You’ll find a link to submit in the credits below.

The Stray
By Denise Pendleton

Not asking for anything. Come only that close.
Through the woods, the field, she has come
to the far edge of our lawn to sleep on the northern side
of our home. In air below freezing, the dog
twitches in her dreams, her coat red
and shining in late afternoon sun.

We take turns staring down at her from the house
we have been in for a long time, here
to open all our gifts, eat the meal
prepared for us, fill our mouths often
with sweets and with wine. A mother
with her children come home we cannot

still ourselves over this dog strayed. How hard
just to watch her, asleep and dreaming on the edge of wild.
We pick out what game to play, what songs
we want to hear sung and we stay
on this side of the window.

Megan Grumbling is a poet and writer who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. “The Stray” copyright 2024 by Denise Pendleton, was originally published in the San Antonio Review (2023). It appears by permission of the author. Submissions to Deep Water are open now and through the end of the year. For more information, go to mainewriters.org/deep-water.