Canine Nasal Knowledge

She is tethered to me, on a spring expanding leash
and so she freely scans the grass, pushing her snout
down close to the life sustaining earth and pulling in
information denied and unperceivable to me. She sniffs,
moves, sniffs, moves, and s-s-sniffs and then, as if
she’d just heard something shocking, her head swivels
back, hones in, locks on to some surprising smell
as if the scent was steel, her nasals magnetized. Down
she goes, her nose on automatic, drawing in every detail
of this smelly coded message—her body language
seems to say, “Hey, geez, I didn’t see that coming,
no way, you’ve gotta be kiddin’, who’d’ve thought it!”