For the Dog Loving Woman

This morning I praise the dog loving woman
walking her beast twice daily; a creature whose
name resembles the Old West: Cowgirl, Jesse,

Annie or Cody. A song to the one who invites
the mud-footed lab to climb between antique
sheets and the hand-quilted spread of her double bed.

Praise to the dog loving woman alone
in her studio apartment with a cup full of moon
mingling with the blue spill of TV across her second-

hand couch. Her floppy eared lab with his dangerous
tail sweeps popcorn and glassware from a mahogany
table, then lifts one giant paw at a time

to lay his head in the crook of her neck as she thumbs
a silken ear. Now I want to say something astonishing: how
our bodies are trapeze artists swinging—

reaching for another pair of loose hands in the blackness;
for the tips of long fingers, the splayed fingers, the open palm
to grip in darkness and pull us from our lonely fall—

no hand, no waist, no shoulder to lean into. Our
separation swirls unleashed by longing. Listening.
We follow a melody through the uncaught air and fall

into the black lap of whoknowswhat. Like the dog loving
woman, we have to learn to wrap our bodies around
the loneliness, make a companion of it. To trust
when we release the rung, to something that will

catch us. We have to learn to come when we are called
and go blindly beneath the canopy where the lights
have sputtered out, where the air is our only embrace.