While looking for something to get my mom for Mother’s Day this year, I decided to go out on a limb and buy her a copy of Mary Oliver’s Dog Songs. My mom is certainly a reader, but as far as I know, she’d never seriously considered reading poetry before. A few days after Mother’s Day, she had already started the book. She called to thank me, explaining she can only read one or two poems at a time because they make her cry so much. “But,” she said, “I really love it.”