Dawn light slips through the spruce and the fir
She pads past the porch where the air smells of fur
No dust jackets here just bark for a cover
She reads with her whiskers a four-footed lover
She walks the line where paper meets pine
Each needle a page she knows by design
The telephone poles hum a hymn she once sang
She follows the scent where the stories hang
A red-breasted nuthatch taps out a code
Like overdue notices dropped on the road
She pauses tail curved like a question mark
Listening close in the gathering dark
She walks the line where paper meets pine
Each needle a page she knows by design
The telephone poles hum a hymn she once sang
She follows the scent where the stories hang
The poles carry currents she feels in her pads
Old sermons and static the good and the bad
An insulator hums like an organ's low drone
She marks the territory claims it her own
She walks the line where paper meets pine
Each needle a page she knows by design
The telephone poles hum a hymn she once sang
She follows the scent where the stories hang
She remembers the child who read aloud slow
Fingers tracing lines in an amber-glow
Now pinecones replace all the books on the shelf
She reads the wind's script by the light of herself
No late fees for wandering no due date to keep
Just sap on the tongue and the snow cold and deep
The choir in her chest sings a wordless refrain
She's cataloged joy she's cataloged pain
Morning brings patrons in flannel and wool
She greets them with purrs no need for a rule
The forest's her section the sky is her ceiling
She knows every ending she knows every feeling
She walks the line where paper meets pine
Each needle a page she knows by design
The telephone poles hum a hymn she once sang
She follows the scent where the stories hang
She settles in needles the final chapter done
The forest holds silence the forest holds one
