Honors

Chris Ellery

May 4, 2025

Even one such as I 

has honors to boast of.

Ticks and mosquitoes 

have esteemed my blood.

Dogs have sniffed 

my nature

and wagged their tails.

Cats have shed 

their fur on my lap 

as they yawned and stretched 

and scratched and purred.

One long-fallen pine

left its sap-rich root

behind for me to find

to kindle my campfire

on a drizzly day

when a black bear stopped

a hundred feet away, 

stood and waved.

And once as I floated 

still as driftwood

on the Mountain Fork River

a gracious dragonfly

hovering above 

my sun-happy self

cast its shadow 

on my bare umbilicus, 

connecting me

briefly

to everything on earth.

Chris Ellery is a long-time and avid supporter of Texas Poetry Assignment and a frequent contributor. He affectionately dedicates this poem, "Honors," to Laurence Musgrove, editor, and to all TPA contributors. In the words of that great adventurer Odysseus, “All men owe honor to the poets - honor and awe; for they are dearest to the Muse who puts upon their lips the ways of life.”