Jill's poem was published in Aireings 5 (not now publishing)
Jill, our Old English Sheepdog, who lived with us on our farm in mid-Devon in the 1950's - and bore many litters of beautiful puppies - appears in Sylvia Plath's Journals. Plath talks of visiting a local woman who had 'a queer old zombie-dog, pink-gray flesh showing through shorn hair, at her door: it is not mine, it is a farmer's on the hill'. Jill did wander; every Summer my father used to shear her, so that she would not get too hot; hence the' pink-grey' skin showing through. Here she is, in the snow, in Winter, in 1963.
Jill’s poem
when she was young
her poems would
simply run-
free-as-her-old English puppy's
headlong sprint on garden paths -
blind to choice
deceit and the
dangerous road over the hedge-
her poems would
simply run-
free-as-her-old English puppy's
headlong sprint on garden paths -
blind to choice
deceit and the
dangerous road over the hedge-
and oh how the wool
was thick over her eyes
was thick over her eyes
Jill, our Old English Sheepdog, who lived with us on our farm in mid-Devon in the 1950's - and bore many litters of beautiful puppies - appears in Sylvia Plath's Journals. Plath talks of visiting a local woman who had 'a queer old zombie-dog, pink-gray flesh showing through shorn hair, at her door: it is not mine, it is a farmer's on the hill'. Jill did wander; every Summer my father used to shear her, so that she would not get too hot; hence the' pink-grey' skin showing through. Here she is, in the snow, in Winter, in 1963.
