Dulled by work and cicadas, I feel your charcoal slice me better than I am, a deft excision here, a tuck to tighten skin below the eyes. I rise creaking like old canvas to bring you whatever you still see, after I stretch and hobble on a bone spur and stiff knees to the rail. After rains, dry riverbanks in hardscrabble bloom bluebonnets. If crops are cotton, early snow. If sunflowers, yellow fire.
Hawks sidle overhead, hoping for one hop, one hop of a rabbit.
Lower, slower, another claims it all, forked tongue flicking mine, mine. Two lone people can't keep a dog indoors forever, even with a larder well-stocked for winter. Trucks are always on the road, and strays bark often on the other side. Fences alone won't keep a good grown pet at home.