Just because mom’s not here, don’t think there aren’t any rules. She left them taped to the frig.
Shelter
by R.S. Jones
You paused outside to look into my cage. I wanted to play it right, wanting to catch your eye with a shy glint in my own, a soft bark that said, “Choose me”, in a canine grammar I hoped you’d understand.
Your face held nothing (Pity, maybe) that let me believe you would ever want a dog like me.
You turned once, twice, a hundred times, coming and going the length of my cage. (Coming and going like you do now, ten times a day.) Then walked away.
I could not stand another day of strangers coming to stare. Passing me over for younger dogs who knew too little to have the strange look of longing I could not keep from my eyes.
I could not stand another night in that place, the cracked cement floor, the howls and whines that kept me sleepless. (Did you know that sound is still the one I hear when you wake me kicking from my dreams sleeping in your bed?)
Then suddenly you were back. I saw you glance at the card hung on my gate — a false name, a date of arrival, otherwise a blank, no age, no history, nothing that would stay with you forever and never go.
You leaned your face into that fence, curling your hand through the wires, blinking in the sun. (Neither one of us so young in the bright, Spring light, yet wanting to be.)
I let one paw hover in the air, but looked away, not wanting to show my eagerness, but wanting to find a way to tell you that I would be a good dog and how much I wanted to be owned. (A dog is only half himself without a master. Unfinished, half-alive).
I could not move nor speak, but when you dropped to your knees and reached two fingers toward my fur, I felt myself fall, (oh, god I could not help myself) letting my body form the words, head back, eyes closed, throat exposed, legs flailing in the air. “Please,” I said. “Yes, please. Take me. Yes.”
Scout
from UNLEASHED: Poems by Writer's Dogs