ninanevermore (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ninanevermore) wrote2010-03-22 05:30 pm
ninanevermore) wrote2010-03-22 05:30 pm
Monday – A Specter of Leaves
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I keep forgetting the dog is gone. My house is haunted by small, quadrupeds by no-see-‘ems that I catch with the corner of my eye but that disappear when I turn to look at them. I miss the dog, but I’m not sorry she is gone; her lifespan had run its course and it was time for her to go. I began grieving her months before she died. I am open to the idea of a new dog, even, to fill the empty space and for new tags on a collar to jingle and chase away the silence that now follows me from room to room the way the dog used to do.
Maybe a new dog could chase away the no-see-‘ems, too.
The no-see-‘ems walk around the end of the couch when I am in the living room, or duck under the coffee table and disappear. They walk past the kitchen when I am standing at the sink. Mostly, they hang out under the oak tree in the back yard, the one that belongs to my son (or so he believes) because it provides the best shade to play under. I see them out the window, walking around under the oak. The dog used to nap under this oak, even though it belongs to my son. As long as she was lying on the other side from where he liked to play, he was willing to share it.
The oak is peculiar in that it loses its autumn leaves in the spring, when the new leaves push the dead leaves from the previous year off. Other trees in my yard shed their leaves shortly after the leaves die, but not this one. Its branches are never bare; the last dead leaf falls only when the branches are resplendent in bright green infant leaves unfolding to drink in the warmth and sunlight of spring. Only then does the tree let the old leaves drop to the earth, like a tall slender woman slowly letting a winter coat slip off her shoulders to reveal a skimpy green dress underneath.
These brown leaves blow in the wind and I see them from my dining room window. My dog was the color of autumn leaves, too, so it’s understandable that when I see them blow by, for an instant I think it’s the dog looking for a place to lie in the cool green grass beneath the tree. At least until I remember that she is gone. The leaves seem to dart after a squirrel, or move in circles to find just the right spot to come to come to rest. It’s an easy mistake to make, watching these dead leaves move like a living thing. When I look closely I see them for what they are: dead leaves enlivened by the wind. The shadow slipping under the coffee table is just a shadow. The silence that follows me around is just a cold, empty silence like any other (unless you count the way it walks and presses up against legs, which is a strange thing for silence to do).
So I’m not really haunted by a ghost, per se. No, there are perfectly rational explanations for it all: I am haunted leaves, shadows and silence – only these, and nothing more.
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.
.
I keep forgetting the dog is gone. My house is haunted by small, quadrupeds by no-see-‘ems that I catch with the corner of my eye but that disappear when I turn to look at them. I miss the dog, but I’m not sorry she is gone; her lifespan had run its course and it was time for her to go. I began grieving her months before she died. I am open to the idea of a new dog, even, to fill the empty space and for new tags on a collar to jingle and chase away the silence that now follows me from room to room the way the dog used to do.
Maybe a new dog could chase away the no-see-‘ems, too.
The no-see-‘ems walk around the end of the couch when I am in the living room, or duck under the coffee table and disappear. They walk past the kitchen when I am standing at the sink. Mostly, they hang out under the oak tree in the back yard, the one that belongs to my son (or so he believes) because it provides the best shade to play under. I see them out the window, walking around under the oak. The dog used to nap under this oak, even though it belongs to my son. As long as she was lying on the other side from where he liked to play, he was willing to share it.
The oak is peculiar in that it loses its autumn leaves in the spring, when the new leaves push the dead leaves from the previous year off. Other trees in my yard shed their leaves shortly after the leaves die, but not this one. Its branches are never bare; the last dead leaf falls only when the branches are resplendent in bright green infant leaves unfolding to drink in the warmth and sunlight of spring. Only then does the tree let the old leaves drop to the earth, like a tall slender woman slowly letting a winter coat slip off her shoulders to reveal a skimpy green dress underneath.
These brown leaves blow in the wind and I see them from my dining room window. My dog was the color of autumn leaves, too, so it’s understandable that when I see them blow by, for an instant I think it’s the dog looking for a place to lie in the cool green grass beneath the tree. At least until I remember that she is gone. The leaves seem to dart after a squirrel, or move in circles to find just the right spot to come to come to rest. It’s an easy mistake to make, watching these dead leaves move like a living thing. When I look closely I see them for what they are: dead leaves enlivened by the wind. The shadow slipping under the coffee table is just a shadow. The silence that follows me around is just a cold, empty silence like any other (unless you count the way it walks and presses up against legs, which is a strange thing for silence to do).
So I’m not really haunted by a ghost, per se. No, there are perfectly rational explanations for it all: I am haunted leaves, shadows and silence – only these, and nothing more.
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