For Prissy, a poem by her handler decades later

Letters from the Dead

How to translate into words?

In dream, you cross your paws, primly,

German-Shepherd odalisque on the couch,

and ever-so slightly cross your eyes

at my human blindness. Caprice – sweet

Prissy. You could see in the dark

through tangles of poison-ivy, berry-

bramble, creeper. I was lost as a flower-

picker in Virginia woods; as a man

wandering the Blue Ridge, a boy

flash-flooded away.

I keep a compendium of names

of the missing. But how

could you disappear so soon? Dark-eyed

to see beyond – what

have you found on the other side?

Dogs don’t write letters home.

But sometimes, by caprice of night,

the moon makes you real again –

a young, live seeker-

dog running across the page.

~ Taylor Graham

from her collection What the Wind Says (www.lummoxpress.com)