Beyond the Bridge the mornings break on leagues of grass still wet with dew, And hounds long vanished from our sight go streaming out in twos and few; They quarter hills for phantom scents, they harry winds that cannot stay, And tear in sudden loops and turns as pups released at close of day. With ears flung back and bright keen eyes they thunder where the skylarks climb, While clover bends beneath their charge and brooks keep measure to their time; No whistle calls, no leash restrains, no weary limb demands its due, Only the old delight of dogs and all the happy things they knew.

I sit in judgement robed beneath the alabaster dome, Well-drilled in liberal canons forged to make the wolf at home; I learned to brand the steadfast man a danger to the state, Whilst sleek marauders, smooth of tongue, passed smiling through the gate. 

No ledger kept by mortal mind has marked a crime that dogs have done, No ancient court has named them foe nor cast their kind from hearth or land; For through the long domesticked years since first our wandering tribes were one, They chose our fire, our fields, our roads, and walked beside the human band.

She slipped her moorings, proud and new, in nineteen fifty-eight’s first light, 

They walk the wards where midnight hums and quiet lamps defy the gloom, 

Upon the deck in rinsed dawn-light, where tar and salt lay sharp as brine, The Captain’s hound would pace the planks and test the wind with lifted head; Below, where lantern halos swam in hoops of amber, faint and fine, The ship’s grey cat slid through the beams like smoke the night had shed.

From Vancouver’s pine-dark rim where Pacific rollers boom, A Royal Navy Thirty-Two stood out beneath a gull-grey gloom; Her yards were squared to southern airs, her pennant snapped like flame, And Halifax lay far ahead, a star without a name; No consort shared her outward road, no friendly mast in sight, Only the heave of iron swells and old oak fading white; Thus south she drove with measured pride and guns in ordered tier, A wooden will with canvas lungs and discipline for gear.

Why snaps the Crescent kennel loud while Canterbury throws me pies, And swears I dropped from angel clouds with gravy dripping from the skies, I only wag at friend and foe and sniff what any hound has smelt, Yet still they bark I’m heaven’s joke while others say I’m Heaven’s help.

One sister spun the bobbin bright, her song a river through the years, She drew the thread from memory deep, from laughter, frost, and tears.

I knew the world by mother-smell, By milk and fur and breathing near, By warmth that wrapped the dark in calm, And told my heart I belonged here.

I watch the flocks above the hedge and wonder what their motions mean, If feathered tribes might mirror us, in faiths and thoughts both sharp and keen; For nature speaks in riddled signs, in glinting wings and drifting air, And bids us ask what truths are shown in every flight and perch laid bare.

Parliament with it's fetid breath proclaimed our halls must open wide, That Britons feed the wandering hordes and set our ancient cares aside; They praised themselves for saintly grace while spending coin they’d never earned, And left the island folk to pay for every bridge they’d later burned.