Ode to Lovely

Sometimes it’s nice to see a familiar face.
Even if it belongs to the wirey greyhound, who traipses around the neighboring backyard.
An old friend I’ve hardly seen, but where she leads me is coated in cognizance.
Despite hopes of feeling her warm snout, the motor of her travels, I keep in my hiddenness.
I watch her old body of that
Peculiar red-gray, paw itself upon the Granite Step.

The one where I jumped and my ankle didn’t cooperate.
Where I lay in pain, in the yard of a stranger and their strange dog.
Where I was helped up by my mother, and that weekend’s dance recital chaînéd itself
Into a trip to the orthopedist.

Often I have admired the dog, in all her foreign entity.
Partially obscured by the untamed bushes and gnarled bark, I let my eyes search for more of her.
But I found some beauty in the forever search,
The game we have between us.
Drawn in and ignited by her endless exploration, consisting of something far beyond my knowledge.

My ears strain to hear the owner cry out her name, and to my delight, they ring: Lovely.
Immediately my teeth are bare to the sky, as a smile spreads on my face. Lovely, I repeat in my own voice.
A string of letters to put to the pacing friend.

I like to believe she spends her hazy days in her well-trodden backyard, scouting for treasures already found. But more than anything,
that she truly knows I see her, and her lovingly lopsided dance because
sometimes it’s nice to see a familiar face.