Every Good Morning

You Can Listen Here I have never seen one. I turned my head and it was there, soundless, its head elevating and stopped when it saw my movement. We matched each other in stillness. It broke first, chancing a slow slow crouch up from the pond where it had been hunting peepers and frogs. Streaked in brown stripes, it matched the grass, and only its closeness brought it home to my eyes. It raised […]

You Can Listen Here The dogs are twin furnaces who must be fed. Whatever the weather, each morning we go out for a long time. They must run. They must think. Almost no one walks in the rain. Hundreds of acres at a time are left wide open for us. We see so much, but birds, birds more than anything. Here, nuthatches, starlings and gray squirrels are nesting in the catalpa. Twenty feet away, […]

You Can Listen Here I could blame it on the dogs. Would I have known otherwise? On a familiar trail but far from others we cut through woods and deep brush to water. They stopped as if hearing a voice calling out a command. Ears up. Silent in the pulse of an exquisite alert. I often obey their lead when they show the way — always this way. If it had been deer, they […]