Rain – oh.
I lie in bed in the crepuscular light thinking what to think about. Henry is curled at my feet. I do not want to get up yet – I do and don’t. I must find a topic for a missive but today I’m not in a hurry and bed is warm and Henry feels – what? – loving? – at my feet. Loving is sentimentalizing, I know – dogs don’t love as humans do – or do they? But no, I’m determined this morning not to slide so soon into abstractions. My prose is too prone to cracker-barrel punditry – lithely alliterated, natch! Saying diverts me from seeing. This dawn, for a moment anyway, try sticking with seeing. Here I am, in the bilge-water-colored light, rain plinking the deck, thinking what to think about. Start from there.
Images bob through my brain like debris on a stream after a storm. Last night before sleep I reread Jonathan Swift’s astonishing, Verses on the Death of Dr. Swift, and scraps still eddy, particularly this wonder, why such a poem could not be written – or even read – today. (Send your thoughts, if you’ve a mind to.) The appetites of intellects are instantaneous and specific – but there I go again, sliding into abstractions: stick with the here and now, can’t you!
Besides Henry and Dr. Swift, an enamel earring swims into focus. Where did that come from? I can’t remember seeing such an earring – quatrefoil, red, green, blue and yellow, pretty in the earlobe and not expensive: it would look nice on Jane. Has sleep designed it for her – or did I spy it somewhere – or maybe she has such an earring and I’ve forgotten – or…
Why not switch on the bed lamp and flip open my laptop? I’m eager to – and reluctant. I’m curious what’s going on – headlines (have they funded the government?), which friends have written? But news is a rut which seizes the wheels of my imagination and won’t let go. There is always something happening! – and for years now, the inevitable Trump, whom I vow to evade yet can’t. Yesterday – get this – after his lawyers pleaded inability to post a bond to cover his whopping penalty for fraud, Trump boasted – in ALL-CAPs!!! – he was sitting on five hundred million in cash (!!!) – which sent his befuddled lawyers scrambling to explain the contradiction (who could be penalized for lying to the court). Such absurdities would be hilarious if a sizable minority of Americans weren’t rooting for this whack-job to return to the Presidency. What the -- !!! But down, Carll, down, not today.
Recollection returns me to yesterday’s meadow. Henry was taking me for his walk. Jane had asked me to clean out the bluebird boxes, so they’d be ready for this spring’s nests. Scooping out clotted straw and dirt, a little mouse skittered to – where? – the only safe spot imaginable, with Henry on the ground, sniffing excitedly and wagging his tail presto con fuoco. A skittering mouse would make his afternoon – sport and snack! This packet of pink panic, hardly larger than my thumb, huddled on top of the weathered birdhouse and played dead, as if I wouldn’t notice. Then a second mouse skittered up and hugged its companion close, terrorized, also stock-still (yet shivering).
Henry’s glittering eager gaze begged me to knock them into his grasp. Not a chance. The spectacle of the panicking pair clinging to each other in the perilous open air melted my heart. I almost wept. So small, so doomed. What gory visions suffused their little brains. Did they pray to me, I wonder. Are we so different?