Alas, I Am but a Stray

A street dog's lament

 

Darkness was all that I could see,
a world too vast, too strange for me.
With trembling paws, through streets unknown,

I sought a hand, a heart, a home.

Who am I, and why am I here?

What sin have I done to deserve this fear?

Was I forsaken, cast away,

Or born to wander, stray by day?

The heavens wept; the rain fell cold,

And in a puddle, my face unfold.

Four little legs, two eyes so bright,

A sable coat, as dark as night.

“Why am I black? Is it dirt on my skin?
If I wash it away, will someone let me in?”

Across the road, another dog stood,

Held by a hand both kind and good.

He had a guardian, shelter, and name,

While I had hunger, solitude, and shame.

What fault is mine, what debt unpaid,

That leaves me lost, unloved, afraid?”
“Why him?” I wondered. “Why not me instead?”

Behind the bins, where trash were thrown,
I found a pack as thin as bone.
They asked no name, they asked no past,
they made me room. I belonged, at last.

Then a little girl held out her bread,
and I wagged my tail and stepped ahead.
“Don’t touch it, it’s filthy!” someone said,
and the boot hurt less than the word instead.

Still, I rose each morning, thin and cold,
with no one’s hand and no one’s hold,
until a horn tore through the night,
screeching tyres, a blinding light.

A tire just ran over me, I lay there as the time passed,
At the road beneath me, at the sky overhead.

And a thought crossed my mind, through the fading light:

“Perhaps all this dirt has washed off tonight.”

The world turned red. The strangers slowed,

then glanced, then drifted down the road.

I looked at my body, still and small,

and thought of the puddle, and of it all.

For every dog wandering, frightened and alone,

May the world offer kindness instead of a stone.

So when you see darkness beneath a streetlight's glow,

Don't judge the dust on the body below.

Still, in a world too vast, too strange for me,

Darkness was all that I could see…..