What If I Lost the Stick?

August 30, 2010.  Monday.

Situation:  I work this afternoon and don’t get home till about 5:20 (I might have been able to finish up earlier but I was tied up in the morning with some financial concerns and with holding the ladder for Moi.)  Moi’s out in the yard, and she’s in a good mood because a batch of honey bees from our chimney have separated from the hive and clumped up on a branch of a tree by the summer house.  When I’m inside putting on my boots, Moi says “The little dog’s been waiting for you all day.”  “I bet,” I say.  “She thinks you could probably throw the stick by yourself,” Moi jokes, “But what if you lost it?  She needs to be there to bring it back to you.”

State of the Path:  I bring along the lilac stick again, still in good shape, even though (as I forgot to mention) a chip flew off it yesterday.  I whiz in the walled garden, and Mway takes two dumps by the trash pile, which still has the fallen sumac tree lying on top of it.  I hesitate for a moment whether to take the side path, but Mway heads down there, so I follow.  The red jack-in-the-pulpit cobs lie just before the monkey vine portal; the virgin’s bower’s all gone.  The multiflora seems to be going through a last ditch growth spurt, and a couple branches snag me around my shirt collar.  The “chokeberry” bushes continue to redden and wither; some of their berries never turned black or purple, but remain a moonish white-gray.   A monarch (or a viceroy) glides right past my ear.  Bumblebees disappear in the touch-me-nots, and down by the creek, a black swallowtail rejects a boneset flower in favor of several touch-me-nots.  It has to beat its wings quickly to keep its proboscis dipped in the flower.   Beyond the swale, Mway passes me by with a little stick in her mouth (what’s she planning on doing with that, I wonder) and heads through the “chokeberries,” so I don’t bother going by the skating pond (which I don’t really want to anyway.)

State of the Creek:  At the tree stand, Mway jumps over the creek; the jewelweed wiggles as she comes up the other side.  Past the big locusts, on the other side of the creek and surrounded by multiflora is a big oak rising above a giant clod of sod that hangs over the pool of water there (the one by the vinyl siding) – another good place for something or other to live, I reflect.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, Mway no longer has the little stick in her mouth, and she awaits me to throw the bigger one I brought along.  The sun is beating hard, and I’m hot in my walking clothes; Mway fetches the stick again and again; with each toss I hope it’s her last – what happened to the days when she only fetched the stick once, I wonder.