My white German Shepherd,
female ears tuned to sounds
I could not hear, disappeared the day my son left.
She must have heard him going;
he who cut me off like the sharp snip of scissors
against the papery peony stems.
She, my white cavalier, could not keep
me from the way he redrafted our love,
flinging himself, a young man now, into the universe.
For him I canvassed the stars, glossed against a crepe sky.
For her, I tramped through copsewood and brambles –
flashlight a-beam, calling her name.
But no staccato bark and no cantering boy returned,
and I stood alone in the spring cold midnight.
Copyright © Sandra Ann Winters 2014