MindSpinner

Emily Dickinson’s poems enchant me over and over because they are enacted on any summer’s day in any garden. A Robin still comes down the walk, an unlucky worm in its beak; bees still plunder blossoms. This particular poem just makes me happy, and so did spending an hour in the garden with the camera, capturing what I otherwise might not look closely enough to see. Both poem and garden bespeak faith in continuity, in life and its rituals that long outlast poets and gardeners.

Bees are Black, with Gilt Surcingles –
Buccaneers of Buzz.
Ride abroad in ostentation
And subsist on Fuzz.

Fuzz ordained — not Fuzz contingent –
Marrows of the Hill.
Jugs — a Universe’s fracture
Could not jar or spill.

While I’ve been fulfilling my responsibilities at school this week, the new rose (”Lasting Love”) has begun to bloom. Its scent is as intoxicating as its beauty.

On this Earth Day, I learned that my Toyota Corolla, which I drive about 20K miles per year, anually dumps somewhere around 11,680 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere. That’s a ghastly amount. You’d think there’d be bricks of the stuff falling out the tailpipe.

On a somewhat brighter note, my deceased 12″G4 laptop will not also be polluting the earth, thanks to Apple’s recycling program.

As a pick-me-up, I stole away to a nearby wildlife education center for a couple of hours this afternoon. (The idea wasn’t to leave everybody behind; they just didn’t want to come.) I sat on a bench and read for a while, then strolled the paths, taking pictures of the local residents.

The weather was warm, the day perfect. The bears, for their part, knew just what to do.

The wild columbine grew here and there, as does the Wal-Mart columbine seeding everywhere in my garden. I think the wild columbine is prettier.

The eagle, whose right wing is inoperable, spoke out against the injustice of being flightless and a bird.

The goslings tucked themselves close in their mother’s wake. If they had been teenaged goslings, they would have been hiding in the reeds on the other side of the lake, talking on cell phones.

Spring break is at an end, a succession of eventful and mostly happy days that left time only for fleeting peeks at my blog roll and email now and then. Posts to follow, I hope, for there’s lots that wants writing. But from now until June 2, school picks up speed like a freight train churning down a steep grade.

There was, over break, time for dog walking, which, in the case of the resident dogs, is something close to an Olympic sport, requiring endurance, speed, advanced problem solving and leash untangling, emergency rescues, puddle jumping, and a willingness to chase rabbits. I know they appear to be small dogs, perhaps just 10 inches at the shoulder if you measure with a ruler, but their size is an optical illusion. In fact, these are big strong perpetual motion creatures who project a cloaking device.

Output for christening tall weeds, fence posts, and telephone poles, one after another, also suggests that their design conceals water tanks of virtually unlimited capacity or the ability to extract water out of the air via rapid respiration. Tongues are probably involved. Other evidence suggests that they may also have teeth of steel and small backhoes and other earth-moving equipment instead of mere paws.

When they are not at home, having dug out of the reinforced perimeters of their fenced yard, they may usually be found partying in a neighbor’s trash can or cooling their heels at the local canine bed and breakfast known as the Animal Shelter. Oh, of course, there is a real fence, conscientiously constructed. It’s reinforced at the bottom with chicken wire and heavy rocks and blocks. Never you mind all that. Chicken wire is for chewing up and spitting out. Rocks and blocks are for pushing out of the way. Dirt is for digging. I’m thinking about cinder blocks secured with rebar next. Or a perimeter trench filled with concrete. (No doubt that’s when they’ll take up pole vaulting.)

Taking pictures of them is no small challenge. There’s the perpetual motion problem, for starters, resulting in lots of pictures of white blurs purporting to be half a dog.

One also notes a certain disinterest, on their part, in posing for the camera.

Sometimes, however, one them can surprise the unwary photographer by suddenly standing still. I’m still trying to determine whether this one was momentarily arrested by a fleeting thought or whether he froze the better to receive a transmission from the Mother Ship, no doubt regarding yet another an out-of-yard reconnaissance mission.

The same question has been posed to me in a variety of ways, sometimes tactfully and sometimes bluntly: “What possessed you to get these dogs?” I give the general impression, it seems, of making mostly sane, well-informed and thought-out decisions - except for my inexplicable adoption of the wacky dogs. I could plead that I was the victim of a form of mind control exerted by two eight-week-old pups some three years ago. But then I’d be displacing responsibility. No, truth is I fell for the “cute and adorable” cloaking device deployed by this merry band of brothers, for bellies upturned for the rubbing, for the sheer joie de vivre coursing through their veins. They can be exasperating, that’s for sure; but when they are around, it is hard to be glum.

(Credits: Dual dog walking and dog photo blogging would have been impossible were it not for the able and intrepid dog walker who captained the canine crew on their spring break adventures.)