The lady at the neighboring table
in the hospital coffee shop takes a sip
from her cup and I see—quickly looking
away—what looks like a boneless extra hand
in an embryonic state, dimpled where fingers 
might grow, hanging from the side 
of her ordinary hand opposite her thumb. 
Cells heady with their own wills
running away with themselves? 
Some mutant gene expressed at birth,
or activated by an environmental switch?
Hardly different from the panoplies
of accident that created our species,
and the host of living creatures—beautiful,
strange, or ugly in our eyes—
glass frog, leaf-tailed gecko, Venezuelan
poodle-moth looking like Fifi, blob fish, 
star-nosed mole, as well as the myriads
lost in the Holocene, like the great auk,
golden toad, dodo. 

I sneak a glance again,
but do not smile, since that might say
I noticed. Placidly, she forks 
a bit of salad to her lips, seemingly
ignoring or accepting the appendage
that must come along on that tiny voyage.

Stranger things are part of us, 
and therefore loved, as long as need be.
                        

It may be that smells move us so profoundly...because we cannot utter their names.
—Diane Ackerman

Our sick dog lay under the end table,
head cocked for our steps, eyes
still speaking to us, before
his last trip to the vet. And that
was the first place his replacement sniffed,
though, ruefully, we'd kept our date
to have the rug shampooed the morning
after we put him down.

No-Name-Yet smells fresh as babies—
released from the pound all damp
fur and sweet breath.
She makes me feel a little like
a mid-life parent, saved from sterility
by a miracle cure. Two days ago I could have
howled for hours, now I'm 
rough-housing on the floor, till she takes time out
to reread the unwritten document,
his old spot.

Could we have not erased
his signature?
Suddenly
I'm low to the ground
to know, taking in pheromones
cross-species, nose like a mourner's 
in a sleeve—

Darker than his 
or sourer? shaggier?—Old Dog
perfume.