How She Does It
My dog leaps boulder to boulder,
perfect balance, not thinking where
she puts her feet. Nose to the wind,
she factors slant of sun
and shadow, updraft, eddy, convection
off hot granite, bacterial action
on particles of scent –
the missing boy passed
this way. She performs tightrope
math in midair, works out fluid-dynamics,
meteorology, the smell of DNA.
I’m lost in her
universe of real-life hide-and-seek;
I can only trust, and try to follow.
How does she do it? Instinct
to pursue, over any obstacle, one
unique scent in all the world of humans –
answer to an equation
no computer has yet solved.
One lost child.
~ Taylor Graham
from her collection Uplift (www.coldriverpress.org)
