Puppy Horde
What's that, behind the computer?
Just Loki, into everything
she shouldn't.
A pile of important papers
on the floor. The box
of old cables & connections, misc
hardware we don't use
but it might come in handy some-
day. Now she's
off down the hall, leaping
on the bed - rummaging the bedding -
What's this? Her raw-
hide bone tucked between our
pillows. She drops it
on a stack of floppy-disks, out-
dated software, not-quite-
castoffs.
And from the pile
of Very Important Papers
she carefully extracts
the single glove she loves
to chew.
Bad dog? A hoarder,
just like we are.
Except, she knows exactly
where she left each
treasure, and
where and how to find it.
How Things Work
This house of many mysteries
where we live - secret cubby-holes
and water-lines that don't show
on the plans - it puzzles every
handyman who comes to fix us.
And now this puppy has chewed
a peep-hole in the wall, exposing
what's not up to code;
excavating faulty cable that might
disconnect us.
She's showing us what's beyond
our ken - the too-long hidden,
the broken and the whole -
things we didn't even know
we have a need to see.
Taylor Graham is a volunteer search-and-rescue dog handler in the Sierra Nevada. She's included in the anthologies Villanelles (Everyman's Library) and California Poetry: From the Gold Rush to the Present. Her book What the Wind Says, poems about living with her canine search partners, is due out later this year.
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