Involuntary

I cut through the park in the rain and she

came the other way — a large dog out ahead,

mud to the knee, the coat gone dark with creek.

The smell reached me before they did.

Wet fur, creek silt, and something under that —

something I hadn't thought of in a while.

I stopped mid-step. Two seconds, maybe three.

She didn't notice. She kept on for a mile

or whatever it was. I just stood there

while fifteen years arrived without warning.

A room. A dog. An afternoon in it.

Nothing remarkable. Just that morning

coming back uninvited, in the rain,

because of a stranger's dog.