“Dog in Blankets” © Martha Spieker. Find more wonderful art by Martha Spieker at Spiekerart.com, and connect with her on Instagram @spiekerart, and on Facebook.
A pre-script (as opposed to a postscript): I have been publicly sharing The Dogs of Looser Island episodes since April 2022. The first episode launched shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, a war that Wikipedia now calls “the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II.” Needless to say, the news has not improved since then.
Ever since the project launched, I have felt the weight of broadcasting a simple “Happy distraction” to a world heavy with grief and grievous acts, felt the need to justify and apologize. A post about the coziness of rain feels trivial, shortly after the anniversary of 9/11, amid calls for violent retribution against those who are perceived to be responsible for the murder of a political activist, threats to use the military against US cities, ongoing war and famine worldwide . . . .
And yet, I continue to believe in the power of stories to imagine the world as it could be, and to ease, a little, our collective burdens. ***
So here we are.
Fall is here, bringing welcome rain, and an excuse to share more lovely Martha Spieker art, including “Dog in Blankets”—a reminder, perhaps, that now would be a good time to curl up in soft blankets and just be.
Growing up (mostly) in the Pacific Northwest, I have a lot of experience with, and affinity for, the rain.
As an aside, I believe rain is one of those dividing points among us. If you’ve lived here for any period of time, you either relish the weather, revel in its siren song Read-Write-Make-Soup, or you despise it, feel as if you can never get fully dry, as if you can sense moss spores taking hold between your fingers and your toes.
I fall into the first category, my sister most definitively falls into the latter. (We each respect each other’s perspective while quietly thinking the other is slightly crazy, at least on the issue of weather.)
Which brings me to the poem, below, originally posted in 2021, re-posted here with a new ending that reflects my ongoing affection for the rain on “my” island in Washington State.
First, some background. Periodically, NPR invites its listeners to participate in crowdsourced poetry, often by writing a poem in the style of a beloved poet. In August, 2019, NPR focused on Kentucky Poet Laureate George Ella Lyon’s poem, “Where I’m From,” which had by then blossomed into a nationwide project of Where I’m From poetry. ****
Out of that invitation grew my own Where I’m From poem.
Not surprisingly, it’s about rain.
Wet Feet
by Shari Lane
I am from rain pounding pattering misting muttering
all around the city,
making rainbows in the streetlights and puddles and once
a whole brown river in the street
so we got out the canoe and paddled away to
nowhere.
I am from country rain, too,
drowned fields and crawdad races in the rain-swollen creek and
finding the tattered remnants of the fort we built
around the lightning-struck tree stump,
where the cows kicked through the thin plastic we used for walls
because they thought it looked warm and dry inside and
cows get tired of the rain, after a while.
Even Oregon cows.
I am from whole days curled up in bed
while the rain on the windows and roof
kept me company.
Reading.
(Eating chocolate, too.
Every kind is good, though Chocolite is best.)
When I emerge I am awkward and loud and skinny but
while I am reading I am every heroine who ever leapt from the pages of a book:
MegMurryAnneShirleyJoMarch,
and so many others I’ve lost their names,
the ones who stood up when someone said
sit down and
act like a lady.
I am from an old photo hidden in an empty bureau
as if the memory itself is shameful.
There is no rain, in the photo.
Maybe that’s the problem?
There is a child with too-long bangs
and too big clothes, standing on a porch,
waiting to go to an airport to fly to the Other Place
where the Other Parent will pick me up,
looking out from under those bangs with a shy, ferocious grin,
hand firmly on the battered suitcase that holds
‘most everything I own,
wondering why each parent always sends me away after a while,
wondering what I would have to do
to be good enough
to keep.
And now, I am from the satisfying plash
a boy’s booted feet make in
the biggest puddle ever.
His sister will join him in the puddle-jumping
just as soon as she learns to walk.
Now, I am from the cool green aroma of
rain on cedar trees, the cold blue smell of salted marine air,
the dappled brown essence of wet pinecones.
Here in my island rainforest I am from the land of you belong,
you don’t have to be good enough to keep,
any more,
you are enough.
Where are you from? If you feel so inclined, I’d love to hear a memory that describes the threads and experiences that, plucked and twanged by the music of Time, made you who you are.
*** Writers with much greater street cred than I have pointed out that stories are as necessary as air and water and food and love.
“In fiction, when you paint yourself into a corner, you can write a pair of suction cups onto the bottoms of your shoes and walk up the wall and out the skylight and see the sun breaking through the clouds. . . .” Tom Robbins
“Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
And there’s this, another gem from Linda Caroll, author of the Substack Hello, Writer!
**** Want more Where I’m From poems? Read George Ella Lyon’s 1993 poem and a description of the 2016 Where I’m From project that was intended as a “response to the fear- and hate-mongering alive in our country today.” George Ella Lyon
Reminder: The first Episode of The Dogs of Looser Island: What the Dogs Know posts Saturday, October 4, 2025.
I love rain and miss the continuity of it in the pnw. This is so beautiful 'Now, I am from the cool green aroma of
rain on cedar trees, the cold blue smell of salted marine air,
the dappled brown essence of wet pinecones."
Lovely, from beginning to end. I feel like all I write about is where I came from, but this format is compelling. I thank you for sharing yours. And no, we cannot stop writing about things that don't include the part of the world that feels like it's burning down around us. It's precisely what I need when I seek out talent like yours, and I trust I'm not alone in that. I get enough of the news everywhere else. Keep it up, Shari. Your characters (including the dogs) are diverse and real, and we need them right now more than ever.