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Dog Talk
…
I have seen Ben place his nose meticulously
into the shallow dampness of a deer’s hoofprint and shut his eyes
as if listening. But it is smell he is listening to. The wild, high
music of smell, that we know so little about.
Tonight Ben charges up the yard; Bear follows. They run into the
field and are gone. A soft wind, like a belt of silk, wraps the house.
I follow them to the end of the field where I hear the long-eared
owl, at wood’s edge, in one of the tall pines. All night the owl will
sit there inventing his catty racket, except when he opens pale
wings and drifts moth-like over the grass. I have seen both dogs
look up as the bird floats by, and I suppose the field mouse hears
it too, in the pebble of his tiny heart. Though I hear nothing.
Bear is small and white with a curly tail. He was meant to be idle
and pretty but learned instead to love the world, and to romp
roughly with the big dogs. The brotherliness of the two, Ben and
Bear, increases with each year. They have their separate habits,
their own favorite sleeping places, for example, yet each worries
without letup if the other is missing. They both bark rapturously
and in support of each other. They both sneeze to express plea-
sure, and yawn in humorous admittance of embarrassment. In the
car, when we are getting close to home and the smell of the ocean
begins to surround them, they both sit bolt upright and hum.
With what vigor
and intention to please himself
the little white dog
flings himself into every puddle
on the muddy road.
Somethings are unchangeably wild, others are stolid tame. The
tiger is wild, the coyote, and the owl. I am tame, you are
tame. The wild things that have been altered, but only into
a semblance of tameness, it is no real change. But the dog lives in
both worlds. Ben is devoted, he hates the door between us, is
afraid of separation. But he had, for a number of years, a dog
friend to whom he was also loyal. Every day they and a few others
gathered into a noisy gang, and some of their games were bloody.
Dog is docile, and then forgets. Dog promises then forgets. Voices
call him. Wolf faces appear in dreams. He finds himself running
over incredible lush or barren stretches of land, nothing any of us
has ever seen. Deep in the dream, his paws twitch, his lip lifts.
The dreaming dog leaps through the underbrush, enters the earth
through a narrow tunnel, and is home. The dog wakes and the
disturbance in his eyes when you say his name is a recognizable
cloud. How glad he is to see you, and he sneezes a little to tell
you so.
But ah! the falling-back, fading dream where he was almost
there again, in the pure, rocky weather-ruled beginning. Where
he was almost wild again, and knew nothing else but that life, no
other possibility. A world of trees and dogs and the white moon,
the nest, the breast, the heart-warming milk! The thick-mantled
ferocity at the end of the tunnel, known as father, a warrior he
himself would grow to be.
…
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