Following the Scent

Following the Scent

Because it's the second one she's lost in a month,
you groan when she emerges from the thicket,
tail wagging and neck bare. You know it's just a collar,
but it's also money, and money feels precious right now.
But then you remember your teacher's advice,
how we must get good at losing things.
And you remember what he said about honoring,
and sacrifice, and your heart starts to turn, reimagining
the loss as an offering to the small bend of woods,
to your dog and her delight, to the trails that hold the scent
of mice and possums and deer. Later, driving to the pet shop,
this is the scent on the ground that you follow,
asking to see their collars, telling them the story of your dog.
A plate of biscuits sits next to the young man at the counter,
which prompts you to tell him another story, one about
your neighborhood UPS man who carries biscuits in his pockets,
who knows each dog by house and name. The knowing is mutual:
the dogs perk up their ears for the low hum of his truck
and the metal clang of the back door, the classic rock
that spills out of the open window and into the street.
When he drives by he toots his horn and they pull on their leashes,
try to match his strides. Now it's the young man's turn
to pick up the trail of the story: “That's my dad,” he says,
and your faces alight, aglow in the synchronicity.
If it's true that we must get good at losing things,
perhaps it's also true that we must get good at finding things.
Perhaps losing things is how we see deeper.
Perhaps losing things is how we begin to understand
what the mystics and scientists have said -
that we're not as alone as we think we are,
that we really do belong to one another.

Dogs seem to be appearing in my poems of late, and that makes me happy. It might make you happy too. I'd long wanted to write a poem about Rick, our UPS driver, and the ways he holds the neighborhood dogs in a swoon. But I couldn't quite find my way in.

And then my dog lost another collar, which necessitated a trip to the pet store. And the rest of the story, well, you just read it. The poem didn't go the way I thought it would, which delights me, which feels like something akin to my dog losing her collar, sending me on a route I didn't foresee.

The teacher in the poem is Stephen Jenkinson.

Last night one of my children was home, a short weekend visit from college. He took Bailey dog for a long walk in the park, her night time glow-in-the-dark collar around her neck. They came back a while later, the dog happily panting, eyes bright, slurping water from her bowl - and collarless. Another missing collar? All I could do was laugh.

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With a grateful heart, Karly