Remember, Remember

One of our neighbors has a serious problem with maintaining the integrity of his fences. That’s a polite way of saying that he doesn’t check his fences frequently enough, and his cattle routinely end up in other peoples’ yards. The local cemetery was forced to put an electric fence around the property after weeks of roving cows knocked over several tombstones and trampled flowers and memorials. Rumor has it that the owner of the cows was pressured to pay for and install the fence. I don’t know. What I do know is that Black Angus lives matter. At least to Jinx. I infer that he loves the cows because he takes a keen interest in their whereabouts. Whenever he sees a rogue bovine near our property, he does a masterful job of turning the offending creature and herding it right back up the road.

There is a subtle hilarity in so much of what I see Jinx do on a daily basis. I know for a fact that if he spoke out loud in a human voice, he would sound exactly like Gomer Pyle. I am grateful for how he can pull me away from the dark thoughts that are part of the human condition and get me to smile and focus on his sincere antics.

He also has a knack on our walks for leading me past things of beauty and wonder. This evening, for example, Jinx guided (herded?) me past a fence where hundreds of little gnats were gathered in a patch of sunlight. The beam was about the size of a large tree trunk, shining across the ridge before it sank into night. In the beam, a cloud of gnats were flying up and down furiously. No, that’s not the right word. They were flying up and down joyously. It was a dusk dance, a bobbing, bubbling shout into the surrounding hills, up into the darkening sky, a bellow of all those little dancers as they poured their energy into that moment at the end of the fifth of November.

And that’s when I realized that the beauty and power and mystery and love in this life cannot be impeded by the vile acts of corrupt and power-mad elites and their toadies. No matter how this travesty of a national election plays out, the small creatures and the shafts of shining light and the watching trees and the listening grass and the incredulous cows and the gorgeous pebbles in the road….these things all love their lives, and they lift their peculiar voices every second of the day and night, and they declare goodness. These things are all good, and they declare their own goodness.

So thanks to the spotted menace for nudging me into that column of golden dying light, for showing me the life dancing within it, for watching me with his kind eyes while I stood there and marveled and felt the cares of the day slip off of me like a tattered garment.

And now the night sits close around us, and it is good. It is so good.

~ S. K. Orr