At the corner, I was ten,
and my dog was waiting.
I whistled a trilling call.
An emotional muscular eruption,
my dog raced across lawns,
ears flying to leap a greeting
into my lexicon arms.
Since then, many times greeted,
an ecstatic god or friend or tree
wrangling sunlight, water, soil
leapt into my ken. I was struck
with the urge to thicken epiphany
with the substance of sensorial words.
Seven decades after the dog, I gave
into urgency and wrote this poem.