Guru Skye – Looking Up To Love

You raise your nose
and sniff the air.
I see you
(now in my mind’s eye)
in that pose,
with the sound of your
quick in-breaths
pulsing for a few seconds.
I am in awe of
the sense of
wonder you
bring.

You are a big spirit
in the world.
Everything about
you is significant.
To make anything
about you seem
small would simply
be a lie.

You capture
my imagination:
Deer darted
across the path!
You reared up
on your hind legs;
I know that my eyes must
have gone wide
with amazement.
Maybe it is the call of the
hunter in you.
More likely, you want a playmate
who is a match
(or better) for your size and
speed.

Part of your beauty is
your majesty.
You lean —
perhaps a little too hard.
We laugh.
You smile.

Mom’s your favorite in
our household.
She knows just how to scratch
your head, shoulders, and belly.
Her walks with you
are not just short ones
up the road.
The two of you go on for miles
and miles.

It’s funny:
I thought I knew enough
from my time with
other creatures
like you.
But we humans cannot
extrapolate from experience
as we might expect.

Not everything is
clear and easy
for you either.
Your desire is high.
You long to see and
smell and chase
everything
that moves or
smells or runs.

Though I do not
always hear it
as clearly as
I should,
your message to me
is this:
“Love me more.
Love me! You know
how to love me.
Go ahead! Do it
now. Do it
fearlessly.”

Etched in memory:
your sidelong glance
as you tip your head
to the left.
This motion
will always stay
present in the pictures
of you
in my mind.
It is, I am sure,
a sign of your
unquenchable
curiosity.

You are also tenacious
and your tenacity
frequently leads to
another fierce
reminder of your majesty:
however much you love
your person, when
wildness calls,
there is very little
that can slow you down.

Which reminds me
of a story from your
time with us.
We two humans decided
to let you run free.
For many minutes,
you happily played
ball and tug-of-rope
with us — easily within
the imaginary confines
of our human
boundaries.
Then — in one of those
bursts of inspiration
that I could not have
imagined without
witnessing you —
you ran down the path.

This path is well-known
to all three of us
for it is the way down to
“our” little waterfall.
I thought you would go
downstream.
We began
calling for you and
searching for where
you were running to,
but you
were long out of sight.

While I called out your
name along with “girlie girl”,
I heard your mom
doing the same.
That was the moment
I realized
how much I love you.
The thunder in my
brain that rained down
the dozens of ways
I could do better by you
never stopped pouring
after that.

And then, when I feared
the worst,
you came running
with wild abandon.
Yes, I know what that
phrase looks like now.
You are still there in
my mind’s eye, thrashing
and falling: abandon
pure, complete, and
wild.

And you had only two
things about which
you cared in that
moment — for you,
these were that
particular “now”:
first was the
joy of running up
the stream (plus
coming back down) and
the other was
the bliss of reconnecting
with your people.