Black Lab

A working relationship. Really skinny dog that looks like a Greyhound/Lab mix has been hanging around, a bit gun-shy, like she's been abused, and huge feet, but gentle eyes. I'm out at the puddle with the weird doomed frog eggs, thinking about Darwin, she approaches carefully, light on her feet, and heels, maybe 10 feet away. I don't want a pet, don't need a dog, but sense a connection. She watches as I rinse the silt from an egg, and I talk to her, tell her what I'm doing; she's attentive, but dumber than a sack of rocks. I can tell she's hungry, and I need to get rid of the last of the pork stew. I'm hesitant about establishing any sort of bond, but a hungry dog with a big tongue can save you a lot of water. She cleans the pan so well that I just have to melt a little snow and wipe it out with a paper towel. A match made in heaven. She comes inside with me briefly, but doesn't like my smoke, settles under the back porch. Could this be the perfect match? Experience teaches that she'll leave me for another. Run off with a well-hung Saint Bernard. But I've learned to live in the moment, and for the nonce, I have a dog. Naming has not been an issue yet. I've named hundreds of things, because it's easier to call something by a name, but I have no inclination to call this dog anything. When I was explaining to her today, about egg-cases and tadpoles, I referred to her as Little Sister. She hangs on my every word and watches what I eat. Late, I roll a smoke and go out with a drink, she refuses my stinky cheese but slurps crackers in the most amazing way. If you hold out a saltine, she wraps her tongue around it and it disappears. Magic. Nora Jones does Bob Dylan. I'm only crying. The music is great, classic blues, NPR late at night, I correctly identify a couple of extremely esoteric songs, Gatemouth Brown, Sonny Terry, but I finally have to turn the radio off because the sound invades my space. I require a great deal of silence. There's an unsplittable Red Maple stump I sit on in the woodshed. I've noticed, lately, I sit there a lot, just listening: birds and wind and the crackling of the ground as it freezes and thaws. Almost but not quite nothing. Cage was correct, nothing is relative. A field of winter wheat waving in the spring wind, a single perfect trillium, a band of sunset that takes your breath away. You can't be unmoved. The natural world is not mediated, it's in your face, no dilution, illusion, solution can possibly explain the sound a sunset makes. The dog comes in, circles twice, and settles on the welcome mat.