A Foster Mother To Animal Kingdom Poem by Lakshmi Vishwanathan

You charm me with your wagging tail.
You touch my heart with your helpless face.
At times, you amuse me with your droopy ears.
Sometimes, you emerge as a chirpy brood from nowhere.
On other times, you test my patience no end
as your canine antics don't relent to my shrill voice.
Yet you cling to me awaiting arms that embrace forever.

You are one being but your faces are many and so are your troubles.
As I attend to your troubles I feel married to you for eternity.
Your many faces bother me but your oneness beckons me to do more.

I guard from perils of fixation to you in the course of your stay with me.
You are a strange scrawny guest from the streets.
As I shield you from the peculiar harms of dark alleys, you come and go from time to time only in a different form each time.

Hooked am I to you and your kind in spite of my best restraints
for not many know your deafening silence.