Paige Milatz
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Porcupine, Thirty-One Years Later
I would like to tell
Miss Oliver
about my good luck,
my encounter
with a porcupine
in quill and forest:
A recently tumbled
Cottonwood tree,
leaves still glossy green
leaning away from the river
instead of upright and
there she was.
How slow, how sloth-like
she moved on the branches
of the thick tree! How
the portly lady arrived there,
the question remains.
Probably slowly.
And not once, but twice
I witnessed her glory
in that magical corner
of the sylvan world,
practically my own backyard
and then never again.
The swollen balloon
that is my heart
twice chose the path
that brought me near to her
and that is the path
I intend to walk
for this long and beautiful life,
full of trees and porcupines.
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Pocket Gopher, Thou Hath Eaten All My Daisies And So I Write This Poem To You
You dig down deep into the Earth
And suddenly reappear
Talons and beaks, the bright white Sun
What is it that you fear?
Your sturdy snout plows through the dirt
With whiskers full of dust
Such mightiness of effort displayed—
The rocks and roots you thrust!
Tall mounds of soil stand sentinel
O’er a labyrinth far below
Thy loamy lumps recall the souls
who make underground ‘Home Sweet Home.’
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The Mallard and Me
A duck would rather be wet than dry
and so would I,
yes, so would I!
When the rain falls from the sky—
the cloud-filled sky—
so very high!
But I would rather walk than fly
because I have no wings to try,
to try and reach the cloud-filled sky—
so very high—
I cannot fly!
Unlike the duck who quacked goodbye
and flapped his wings to start to fly:
Goodbye! I waved up to the sky
and now I’d rather be home and dry.
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Paige Milatz’s dapper cat, Winston.
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Paige Milatz writes and lives in a happy home in the Little Spokane River Valley with her cat and husband. Her poems have been published in Canyon Voices and The Bluebird Word, with poetry forthcoming in an anthology from Empty Bowl Press. Her work was also accepted into the 2026 Bread Loaf Environmental Writer’s Conference. You can find more of her writing on Substack @ Treat Her Right (https://treatherright.substack.com/).
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Posted in Third Annual Pet Writing Contest and tagged in #boudin, #poetry, Poetry