Winter

By Michael Szela

I take the dog out morning and night when it is still dark.

The dog sleeps in her kennel, stretches when she gets out, glances at the warm bed she’s not allowed to jump in until after.

It’s 6AM January in Maine, blueblack cold at the end of a gravel road in the forest.

I step outside and , ala Rilke, place one black tree against the sky and make my world.  And it is huge.

Morning and night I look at the sky while the dog finds her places.  Some nights the moon shines down brilliantly the reflected light of the sun.  Formed by a collision with a meteor that tore out a chunk of earth and consigned it to be a celestial follower forever and forever and forever.

The kind of time I will not have, for my end is approaching.

Sometimes the moon has frosty breath like the dog and I.  We walk the cratered old snow as if on the moon.

Sometimes the stars shine in the crystalline ether. Orion hangs above, covering a quarter of the sky, son of Poseidon and the gorgon Eurydale, sister of Medusa. His western shoulder the Blue giant star Bellatrix, eight times bigger than the sun, 250 million light years away.

The dog glides around the dark quiet yard.  She is a Viszla, a Hungarian bird dog the same color as Cayenne pepper, her name.  She picks her spots just out of my vision. She likes her privacy.  All I can see is the blur of her thin deer like legs.

The snow is squeaky cold underfoot.  The nurse at my treatment says we are having a double polar vortex.  A crossfire hurricane of cold, Jumping Jack Frost.