Your Wild

Most nights, after I am asleep
You go out with your flashlight
And review things seen in day
Transformed like words spoken
First by someone you love,
Then by someone you don’t,

And sit at the edge of the pasture
With Best’s brilliant pointer nose
Poised for coyote and rabbit, deer
Or mouse, size of disturbance
Being no object, no deterrence.

Sometimes you walk around
With all three dogs yapping
And sniffing at your steps, in
The distance, the dam whistle
Signaling danger to night fishers.

You walk through webs and into
The past that bred untamed love
In your bones, your skin alert
To the moon and the message of woods,
Hay and snake, spider and prey.

All the next day, I think of you
Out there while I was in another
World and know that you took
Me with you anyway, both of us
Rich with the joy of the wild.

–Shaun Perkins