The Hundredth Walk

Greta drops her nose to the path,
mud-scent and melt-water,
ice going soft at the edges
where willow leans red against grey.

Each day this circuit: shore-walk, stick-throw,
the steady pull of habit wearing grooves
in the ground, in the body’s knowing;
what the paws remember
what the breath rehearses
what becomes prayer
by being done and done again.

The hundredth walk and she pauses
at the same split birch, waiting
the way she’s taught me to wait—
nose to the wind, the first
opening toward gratitude.

And I stand where I’ve stood
a hundred times, boot-mud, dog-breath,
the ordinary cold,
until devotion is no longer choice
but bone, breath,
the ground we stand on

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