Shelter

She chose me,
the plain brown dog
still sodden with abandonment
and the bookish little girl with tangled hair.

Anxious eyes pleaded through the chain-links,
and I dropped to all fours
on smooth cement that smelled of lemon bleach,
pressed my face into the wire.

It was then that she claimed me,
groveled up, ears held high with hope,
and out from under the cage door
came the rough, warm pads of her paw
to press down against my fingers.

I looked up at my mother and said
“This is the dog for me!”

I was very, very right.

Would that it could be so easy now,
that I could stroll into a shelter
for the lost and the rejected,
the too-clumsy or too-wild,

and scan along their faces until The One
with his anxious eyes and rough, warm palms
chooses me.