Strays, Athens

They look almost dead, flat out on Cathedral steps.

Or limping down side streets. Unable to muster the breath to bark or to beg.

Noon. Summer heat. A solace of scraps in shadows?

Perhaps. Dogs without Owner, dogs without Master, become dusty, drifting ghosts of their species. Foreign to their cousins who fight.

Night. The sky above the city grows dark, the Acropolis lights up upon the hill, crowds sprawl from café to street, friends from restaurants spill - and, then, awaiting lovers, dances, dangle dainty feet from balconies.

And into the indifferent humans of these late pleasures, the howls of the stray dogs call: From the magnet of monuments, past the swirl of the central square, to the rubble and rubbish of fringe estates, howls more honest than any poem, howls as simple as a child's prayer. Howls of one hope. That in the millions, there must exist one who loves them, somewhere.