this dog and I in poetry

Twenty thousand years ago when I was a hunter-gatherer and
this half-poodle half-something was a grey wolf at my side
our neuroses made us alert and better hunters and kept us alive
when others died to sabrecats and fuzzy elephants and whatnot back then.
My tendencies toward pattern recognition taught me
how to find the good things in the forest and
how to avoid the bad up in the hills beyond but now
I watch the news and I spin out a story how the world is ending
I misinterpret the words of women so that I can break my heart.
This dog used to hear the furthest twig-snap of a monster
smell a rabbit burrowed in some far-off field
see what grass blade might mean some quarry beneath.
Now he just barks at shadows and car rumbles and
the little neighbor dog that could never jump the fence
his food comes in a bag he doesn’t have to bark at and
yet still he barks. He barks himself into a
little heart attack every other hour at
nothing and if not nothing at least
nothing that could never harm him.

Twenty thousand years ago, we were wolf and hunter.
Today, now that we are both just fat hairy things
in a world that doesn’t make a lick of sense
our once mighty reflexes now just lingering neuroses
just burdens that make us twitchy and ill-at-ease
just make us nervous and weird
just make us unhappy because
that’s what being the gap between evolutions
is.