The Portsmouth Poetry Hoot, sponsored by the Portsmouth Poet Laureate Program, is usually held on the first Wednesday of every month at 7 p.m. at Café Espresso, 738 Islington St., Portsmouth. The next Hoot, to be held on Feb. 7, will feature poets Lee Sharkey and Adam Scheffler. The event is free and open to the public.

Daddy’s Girl

He held her gently

when she was new

rubbed his grizzled beard

on her soft sweet face.

He reads while she plays,

closes the book to gaze upon

her brown-eyed wonderfulness.

An old soul, this.

She knows things.

She knows us.

But he,

him,

the man,

is hers.

And they know this.

She rubs her grizzled beard

on his soft sweet face

and kisses him

wetly.

 —Cheryl Lang

I heard this poem as I listened to Ms. Lang read it, and interpreted it when I subsequently re-read it, as a father-daughter poem. Made sense to me. I have a photo that documents the truth of lines 8 through 11—“An old soul this./She knows things./She knows us”—of my daughter, at what age I don’t recall, her hands, not visible in the photo, resting on the top rail of a playpen that confines her small body, but not what is projected from her eyes, her mouth, lips ever so slightly downturned, having given voice long before to what I perceived to be acknowledged in those lines. The lines that follow—“But he,/him,/the man,/is hers”—also made sense. My daughter’s ownership of me is sometimes manifested in what I came to know as a pinky promise, the inviolateness of which was brought home to me one night at The Rusty Hammer when my thanking the bartender for preserving me from breaking one led a gentleman at the bar to turn, nod, and assert “You don’t break pinky promises. Those are solid.” What puzzled me, though, was the counterpoint to Ms. Lang’s opening lines. Again, I had experienced with my own daughter the scene described by the latter— “He held her gently/when she was new/rubbed his grizzled beard/on her soft sweet face./He reads while she plays,/closes the book to gaze upon/her brown-eyed wonderfulness.” (Well, not entirely; I’ve been clean-shaven since before she was born.) But what to make of the concluding lines—“She rubs her grizzled beard/on his soft sweet face/And kisses him/wetly”—became clear only when I queried Ms. Lang about featuring the poem in this column, her response in the affirmative including a photo of husband Gordon holding a grandson of 8-year-old, 145-pound Oonagh, the Irish Wolfhound they call “Daddy’s Girl.” “[B]rown eyed wonderfulness,” indeed. Canine or human, a “Daddy’s Girl” is a “Daddy’s Girl.”

Cheryl Lang has been training, breeding and showing dogs across five decades. She’s also up to her withers in horses and cats. Conversant in many animal languages, as well as some human ones, she hosted an Internet radio talk show a few years ago dealing with all subjects pet-related. Being fond of words and her favorite husband, she is the co-founder and co-host of Poets in the Attic, a Wolfeboro group now in its 14th year. Periodically, she has also had a real job.

—John Simon