Three Dogs Knowing

They don’t set out to do anything grand.
They play, the three of them:

Jack, Danny, and Max.

Every morning the play continues,

tugging one another this way and that

along throughout a day.

If Danny sits, scratching and gazing

across the fence and quiet street,

Max will bring him an enduring piece of hat

or garden hose or

the last fourth of a plastic ball

and drop it at his feet.

If Jack lies in the grass

with sun on his ribs and breeze in his ears,

the other two will attack mid-dream

with nip and tug at neck and tail.

It is pure genius and heart.

Three dogs living out the Mystery

every moment

while it slips like water through

  all of my grasping. 
 

[Adapted from the poem “Three Dogs Knowing” by Em Claire (2005), published in When Everything Changes, Change Everything, by Neale Donald Walsch, p. 93-94, and inspired by our neighbours' three dogs.]