Dingo Diogenes

Can you balance the feral,
The half-domesticated
Familiar, commensalist,

With the genuinely wild,
Play the cosmopolitan
Synanthrope among the pets

While your cousins go extinct,
Inbred in the tattered woods?
Could you keep this up for years,

For life, for generations,
Your little-changed descendants
Running alongside in packs,

Scavenging the marketplace,
Sleeping in bins and culverts
As a species of habit,

Still lolling those wagging tongues,
Still swaggering, carrying
Stolen lanterns in strong jaws?