Dogs where the Pain is

Walking at dawn, snow sparkling, happy in ways that used to be fiction. "You can't make it up" is patently false. Sexual fantasies repeating now in other minds like all along it was about communion. Blue jays in hemlocks, juncos picking through chicken scratch. Let it be and it enters into nontrivial dialogue with you. Steam rising off the compost. So much settles when we settle on the river, let it carry us where it will. Before your name, your being, and before your being something we cannot say aloud. I remember certain specific happinesses, including watching it rain from the back porch, loose horses galloping together through recently-harvested potato fields. At what age did I lose the ability to communicate with my father and is there a better way to ask this question. Throaty howl of the rooster the day before he is killed. One fishes a long time without worrying are they catching anything. Putting aside the clock, putting aside the calendar. "I'm not asking." Stamping our feet in the parlor, unraveling our scarf. Waiting through night, waiting through the day. There are dogs where the pain is deepest. Om shanti, om shanti, amen.