Red Dog Among The Pines Poem by Jenny Kalahar

Nose full of lake and spruce, ears alert to the rumble of lumber trucks
Paws skimming over clean sand dunes, upsetting seagulls
or slowly stepping over driftwood and smooth, flat grey stones
Red fur matted and scented with Queen Anne's lace and pine tar
Head lowered, eyes searching at the wayside stop
hoping for pasties and potato sausage and nisu
Tongue at the ready for those Upper Peninsula flavors
The stray dog lingers near benches, his dark eyes wide, expectant
Crusts are thrown for his patience, and then he's back on the highway
down US-2 by day and hidden in the woods by night
rushing deer through clearings just for sport
catching fish-heads and sandwich ends tossed from anglers and tourists
sniffing the trails of pine needles, twigs and birch bark
white sands of beaches, black tangles of decaying weeds
where this Great Lake has tossed them

As the stray sleeps tucked into a mound of rotting fish nets
or against the slope of a dune
visions seep upward from the earth each night
dreams of running wild with the ghosts of Chippewa
He can hear their low songs or swelling cries
the weeping thump and snap of ancient trees chopped at and falling
He can smell campfires with their crackling trout
but wakes alone and unsatisfied in the empty morning wind

This stray, though, was not always stray
He revisits a cabin near an overgrown shore
when he has roamed that way, to sit on its familiar porch
and to sleep there for a night
at the side of a weathered rocking chair, where the floor is worn
where he had scratched and turned before resting near his man
evening upon evening
The chair is empty once again, but still the dog rests
He sighs, remembering a firm, crooked hand
stroking his back with each stride of the rocker
the scent of tobacco smoke curling in his nose
stories of copper mining and lost love in his ears, or silence
and then the stray sleeps on again, alone

But this morning, long hours later, a hand is there upon his matted back
the creak of rocking at his side
He lifts his weary head to find a young stranger there
a man who has often wondered if he would ever meet the dog
whose copper tufts had snagged the nails of this worn porch
"Well, Red … shall we go in to breakfast now? " he asks the stray
And the dog's heart softens, melting like a Northern frost
at hearing his own, true name again