Slinking through the brush
in the dip between two pastures,

she pauses to stare where we walk,
past the lowered heads of Holsteins

grazing, then turns to the north.
I’ve never seen one before, her fur

reddish in twilight, the same warm tones
as the grass. Her body is slight, her ears

pricked like the pet that sleeps
next to us, tail tucked, gaze gold-flecked,

feral, pointing where her quick movements
will follow. Trotting slowly uphill,

crossing the road where hay bales
thin in the soft clanking of cow bells,

she dissolves from our view. I heard
coyotes howling in packs as a child,

my cheek pressed to the bedroom window.
Bodiless, roaming night forests like ghosts,

their emptiness seemed like a hole
in the dark, sharp in the cold

cast of the moon. But here, the sun
cuts yellow edges on the tufts of field

turned up by hooves, and the wild dog
reappears where pine branches and bog

come together. Closer to shadows
now, she is as real as the stranger you know

as your own: wary and eager, a thief in your home.