Walking with Ned...

The early morning’s sharp edged moon,

Clear shining mirror of the coming dawn,

Catches our breaths rising through its light.

Ned’s fancy tugs us both across the still dark land,

Into woods, under sumac, by raspberry canes,

Beneath the lightning-scarred hemlock,

Around and around the dead young elm,

Now under the sparkling yellow birch

That hangs out over the riverbank,

And back again, toward home, around

The barkless elm, the hemlock, healed and tall,

By the hollow wintering canes, by the sumac,

Shadows stretching across the meadow.

Ahead the familiar silhouette,

The house, safe, and soft, the bed.

 “In,” I say.  “Ned, let’s go in.  Come on, Ned.”

But he knows better than to listen.  He feels

Crisp snowy grass, softened stubble, stones.

He smells distant fires, wind, melting ice,

Where rabbits crouched, where deer grazed,

Where moles crept, where pinecones fell.

He knows exactly where we were and where

We never yet have been.  He walks me there.

Overhead we hear the mourning doves,

No longer safe in their shadowy poplar tree,

Whirr awake to fly across the moon,

Warbling shadows from a fading night

Gone to other worlds.  Not us, not just yet.

Ned and I watch them forsake our earth. 

We’ll stay here awhile under this sky,

Tethered together by our common need

To teach each other those timeless truths

That pass forever between men and dogs.