Yes, I reply to the cryptic stones,
she was the alpha pup
who refused to grow up,
more human
than my snarly neighbors.
She reveled in necessity:
herding cats, scolding geese,
disturbing the high-and-mighty
fortresses of squirrels.
And yes, she would have tumbled
like one of you
down the salmon’s icy ladders,
or levitated over embers
to catch her Frisbee had I asked.
Divining the weather ahead,
she suffered critic crows,
and gathered out of fall’s debris
a whirling litter of her own.
Now her doe eyes target spinning suns,
and her wolf ears perk at howling moons.
She runs, leaps, zeros in
where I will not, cannot
call her home.