To My Neighbor’s Half-Grown Puppy-Dog

I hear you, buddy.

All day long you howl,
confined to your blue kennel –
I hear you, my friend,
I hear you.

If I were a dog,
or had a howl half as eloquent
as yours,
I would howl too –
mournfully, like you –
all the day long.

Yours is a howl that articulates
      and wrenches
from the heart
a thousand emotions.

So howl,
my comrade-in-care,
my companion true,
for when you howl
you howl for us two.