Three Poems by Taylor Graham

DYNAMO

5 a.m., she vaults onto the pillow - 

no easy landing. “Wake up!”

She never learned to puppy-pile, 

cuddle comfort against a mother's belly.

She's all angles - elbow, hock, 

shoulder-blade knocking against your 

sleep. Machine of intricately 

meshed gears on a drive-train spine. 

Pure energy and moving parts. 

You wake up cursing her knuckle 

in your eye. Nothing in your life is safe

now. She roughs the cat and rags 

the old dog, she rearranges the living

room. And then she unwinds

in a flash, on her back before me

for a tummy-rub, her tongue a flick

of love against my hand. Then

up and running, she's a constant change 

of plan. Shall I ever discover the sweet 

puppy wrapped in steel-spring?

 

 

GRAVITATIONAL

It pulls her out the doorway, down the hill. 

Something new to a dog's nose.

This old world looks just the same to me,

dried out by drought at summer's end.

Nothing green or freshly minted -

but everything's new to a dog's nose.

Take this stone, whitewashed 

by last winter's floods -

just a chunk of creek-bottom rock - 

ecstatically new to a dog's nose,

with a tough scrim of dried-on fluff  

like old meringue. My dog scrubs

it with her breath; inhales its common 

wonder, new to a dog's nose,

a come-hither scent that's got her

creeping on her elbows

for a closer sniff. Secrets I'll never

know; new to a dog's nose.

 

 

RESCUE

This morning's first

light for a neglected pup 

who lived

in a crate, his life 

sieved through wire.

What does any dog desire

but to let the wild 

fire of sun,

wind, earth stir him 

to run for the horizon? 

Give him just one

friend-dog

to tug his end of leash, 

to make the rules 

bend; to fly.

Now just watch

the two 

of them dash by -

so happy 

under sky. Alive.

 

 

 

 

Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. She's included in the anthologies Villanelles (Everyman's Library, 2012) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present (Santa Clara University, 2004). Her book The Downstairs Dance Floor was awarded the Robert Philips Poetry Chapbook Prize. Her current project is a collection of dog poems, about living with her canine search partners over the past 40 years.