Reach and spring of fore and hind legs,
then scissored close and release:
all in a moment, again and again.
The dog at run on the beach
forgets his legs' long stride and bound
when hunting the gnaw of hunger.
The whiff of shellfish or salmon
snaps his head like a leash
and he wheels:
spine in a sidelong arc,
legs like rimless spokes,
paws asplay and spattering.
Then: eyes usurping his nose
by glint of a gull's wing,
he turns and vaults the break of waves.
His bark is the grasp of gravity,
but the bird escapes him.
So again to wet-leg, tongue-loll saunter,
neither feather nor fin in his sky-high skull
till it somersaults to his eye.
A figure appears, a woman dark before the water;
she moves in slow stroll or is still.
The dog in sand-road orbit rounds her
as though on a leash recoiling,
closing in logarithmic radius
to the centre.
She looks beyond him,
beyond the encroaching waves,
and contemplates the smallest undulation
of a molecule of water buried in the bay.
She sees through breezes to the wind.
The dog, for a second motionless in mimicry and vigilance,
sees the seagull land.
He starts off again,
racing in full-bark armour.
Once more it escapes, rising away in a raucous arc.
Though he slavers for the gull,
he loves the bird's parabola.
He glances at the woman, then back at the bird;
and for the briefest, fleeting moment, he wonders.
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