The singer at the corner table,

lounging half hidden in the shadows,

is not yet willing to take the stage;

cheap red wine sits before him;

in the tiny cafe's spotlight, the guitarist

strikes up the somber cascading peteneras,

playing alone, music with no words;

music, but not song

 

Three things that are terrible to discover

haunting your back trail:

a band of men, a pack of wolves,

a hunting party of men with wolves

 

Both men and wolves

are unrelenting in pursuit:

the wolves are tireless;

the men never forget

and cannot be distracted

 

Both men and wolves

are long-distance lopers;

both struggle with their kin for command;

both live or die by the clan:

right at the beginning,

so far back, men and wolves

understand one another

 

So far back, right at the beginning,

they speak to one another

in the Old Language:

glance and gesture, movement, touch,

and all those sounds that we made

before we had words

 

In the din of the tiny cafe,

the wife raises her eyebrows

just that slight distance;

none of their friends at the table

has marked it, but her husband

tilts up the last of his espresso,

prepares to rise

 

It is music but not song; it is

the blunt imprecise language

of the body, of the unlettered recesses

of the old brain, the ancient heart

 

My dog looks pointedly at the glass

from which I have just drunk;

then she stares into my eyes

and her tongue darts out,

swift pink flicker over her upper lip,

gone in an instant. I understand

that she is thirsty

 

It is most often in the Old Language

that my dog and I speak:

we speak of thirst, we speak of hunger;

we speak of a readiness for play,

a readiness for sleep;

we speak of fear and joy,

pain in the body, boredom, impatience;

we speak of the happiness that leaps up

at the reunion of the parted

 

At night she burrows in against my side.

Mumbles and sighs, a few pats:

so we tell each other of contentment,

and of blind trust, and of the love

that is unto death