This evening, I watched my dog, surveying her kingdom in the magic light of dusk.
She sniffed in the gravel around our perennial beds, neglected and thick with creeping charlie.
She froze to consider a squirrel who stood on her haunches, husking a sunflower seed beneath the bird feeder, the sun lighting a fire in the red highlights of her fur.
I wondered, “Is she the one who built a nest in my gas grill?” and “Does she have her hair done at the same place as my wife?”
The squirrel watched the dog watching her.
Neither moved more than the blink of an eye or the twitch of a whisker, and I held my breath.
A breeze twinkled the chimes, and eternity passed around us in the last gasp of twilight.
In the mere moments it took for the light of our sun to reach the edges of the universe and bounce back to Earth, I was twenty-seven, stunned by the agile flight of a pileated woodpecker in Des Moines’ Water Works Park; then 17, catching the sunlight through the trees in a pretty girl’s eyes in Madison’s UW arboretum; then 10, chasing frogs near the lake by the home wear I grew up.
And the squirrel hopped on the tree.
She twitched her tail and chucked, taunting the dog, who was still lost in her own imagination.
The squirrel rounded the tree, and the dog went on to discover more scents. She squinted in the sunlight and sneezed.
I wish I were more like the dog, with the patience to freeze, taking in the wonders of the backyard.
But I a man with little boys to yell at, and they wonder where their supper is.