When the trail gave us up,
he was there—just sitting
in a pickup that carried
stories in dents and dings,
scrapes and scratches telling
of good times gone not so.
Propping the door open
he leaned into the vee
of windshield and door.
"You seen a man and a dog
up there in the pasture?" 

No, but never mind, it was just
an opening for other words
to slip through—words like
family and woods and used-to-be.
And so we stood
and we talked.
Companionable. Companions.
No introductions,
no bandying about of names, just
kinship like the air between us.
The afternoon breeze whispered,
"This is how the world was meant to be.
This is how we were meant to be in it."

© 2008 by Sarah Anne Loudin Thomas
Used with the author's permission.