Dogged Night
Monday, August 18th, 2008
Tonight, mojitos on the couch with the sun dieing – in fact, already dead. Purple light on the house fronts, sky baby blue, dog curled up at my feet, one ear lifted and held in place by the chair arm. The cusions especially soft, nearly damp at twilight and the dew settling in on the thick grass blades.
All the colors outside are beginning to swirl, one large gradient across the whole neighborhood. Locusts sing and buzz. The lightning bugs moved out in July and left room for out of season June Bugs. The cat scratches on the back steps and ventures farther into the house where children lie quietly, noy yet asleep. Outside, dogs bark along the fence rows, one distant and one near. The sound takes me back to the window I used to sleep by as a child. No air-conditioning in the house, just the wind blowing in over my body and the thin sheets. I could hear the screen in the window bend and groan some nights, but never give way.
In the span of a no more than a couple minutes, the sky has turned gray about to fold over to black. Last night, the moon was close, a perfect peach circle in the sky streaked by billowing clouds. Now even the colorful flowers in the window baskets have gone muted, dark, shadowy. The barking I heard and remebered by has become the music of the night. Dogs are passing the tune over the fence-bound prisons to other dogs. This music is a reminder to their owners to let them in – to set out bowls of cool water and heaping dishes of gravy flavored pellets.
For them, the night ends the daily depression of gnats and flies buzzing at the ears, of drinking bowls once filled with cold water gone lukewarm. Under shade trees and in the shaows of play structures, they rest and dream of the moment the fence gates open to let them around to the garage or a child to pass to be accosted with barking.
