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Hodie
I poured a cup of coffee this morning and then let the dogs out into the back yard. Standing on the ice-slick deck, I listened to the sounds from the dark. Fog made everything sound close, amplified yet muffled. A deer broke and ran in the woods. I could hear the heavy rhythmic thumping as it leapt over logs and obstacles on its way to the far fence. Jinx was transfixed by the sound, but I suspect he knew better than to give chase. It occurred to me just then that so much these days is obscured by fog and darkness. I do not know all of what moves out…
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The Epiphany of the Lord
While on our daybreak walk this morning, Jinx and I watched two men setting up chairs under the tent at the newly-opened grave in the little country graveyard. The spotted menace seems to take a special interest in the craft of the sexton; I was grateful he didn’t leap onto the tarp covering the grave. This time. The wind was chilly and brisk but not unbearable…about 43F. The clouds moved like a flock of sheep across the sky, low and swift and wooly, and the tang of silage came to me when I turned into the wind. As I walked, watching Jinx gallop in one of the pastures, I engaged…
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On The Feast of Stephen
The dogs allowed us to sleep late today –0700 — and after they had eaten and while the good Texas pecan coffee was brewing, I took Jinx for a walk. Not even a hundred yards into the ramble and I was wishing I’d worn sunglasses. The fresh-risen sun was slashing across the diamond-studded smooth white surface laying on the fields, and it hurt my eyes. All about me, though, was beauty of the pure shocking kind that only wintertime can produce. The snow lay all around, deep and crisp and even, and Jinx chased a cow that had somehow escaped her fenced pasture. My heart lifted as the sun lifted,…
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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…
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Accomplished By Needles
Up before dawn with two hungry dogs, one of them also quite urinacious (the spotted menace has no such weakness, being of the Ancient Order of the Iron Bladder), and Mrs. Orr prepared breakfast tacos. We ate and talked of west Texas and her tough people and her immutable wind that scrapes across her lion-colored hide. Jinx and I walked and watched cows bent to their unceasing cropping of grass, working their magic of transforming green blades into white milk. In the un-sunned early hours, we could hear the moist tugging of the grass into the soft lips, and an unseen owl in the enormous oak tree asked his eternal…
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Drained
This morning when I awoke, it was 46F. It will get down to about the same temperature tonight. The day was one of those luminous ones, the kind that start with swirling showers of yellow and gold and red leaves, the kind with high puffy clouds riding across the sky so blue it frightens the eyes, clouds lit from within with the high-wattage bulb of glory, the kind where the warm, buttery air carries within it the scent and hint of the frost that is coming on like a jove, the killing, revivifying frost, the dear rime of the earth’s whirl. It was a difficult day to be trapped inside…
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Cool And Clear
It occurs to me that I write daily temperatures on my calendar and/or in my notebooks. In the interest of avoiding redundancy, I think I’ll start noting temperatures in these blog entries (on the days I actually write blog entries). This morning it was 46F and very clear when Jinx and I set out on our walk. I took vacation this week, just to relax and enjoy the fall weather and do a few projects around the house (some painting, a final mowing of the lawn, some trash hauling, etc.), so the feeling of bliss and freedom and peace was exquisite when I donned my jacket and cap and took…
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The Bales Of October
We were up this morning in the silver moonlit dark of a mountain October, Mrs. Orr preparing the dogs’ breakfast and the coffee. We watched the dogs with some wariness, as we had an incident last night. Each evening about 830 or so, I take them outside for what we call the biscuit run. They do their business in the backyard, and then tumble back inside to await their treat: a dog biscuit for Jinx and a half-biscuit for Dixee. Usually, it’s a mellow time. But last night, Jinx was snuffling up a few crumbs from his biscuit when Dixee decided to come over and insert herself between him and…
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The Silver Curtain
I am drawn to certain things, and I cannot tell why. Certain types of music, certain faces, certain scents…and these are not merely things congenial to me. They seem to have an underlying pull, a significance to me. Why? Why this sort of music or this shading of light, and not another? Some time ago, I flirted for a while with the idea of reincarnation and thought perhaps the mysterious affinities were related to a past life. But I could never make the full idea of reincarnation “fit,” mostly because I looked around, almost completely unsuccessfully, to see if I could discern anyone who seemed to be an “old soul,”…
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Cycles
A year ago today, an intrepid heating & A/C repairman helped me remove a dead and reeking possum from our furnace. A few days ago I caught a young possum in a live trap in the cellar. And this morning? It was raining hard and steady when I let the dogs outside. Little Dixee immediately alerted on something and followed the scent all over the back yard, nose to grass, stub of a tail quivering like the needles on a polygraph. Jinx did his bidness and wanted back inside, but not the little dowager. I watched her as she tracked around and then finally reared up on her hind legs…