What Will My Dog Return As?

What Will My Dog Return As?

My witchy friend, 
a good witch, an avowed vessel
through which energy flows, 
chats with my mother, one year deceased
yet still bending a stranger’s ear.

My Buddhist-curious friend 
recites the cycle of cloud to rain
to cloud, and so on, 
how the cumulonimbus returns
to balance on the head of a woman in Benin.

Yet the space behind my eyes 
conjures nothing, 
my past life memory an unplugged TV
unable to air a new episode, 
let alone a rerun.

My writer friend sympathizes
in his writerly way, suggesting 
he and I suffer from vuja de — 
that strange feeling we’ve never been here.

He lives life as though 
it was the only cup of coffee 
he will ever sip, savoring every layer 
of its sweetly roasted caramel aroma —
no refill. 

While that sounds delicious,
if given a choice, I would like to return 
as my dog who delights in this life, 
splashing about in the lake like a child 
reuniting with a long, lost puddle.