Night Watch

Chico whines, no reason why. Just now walked, dinner gobbled, head and ears well scratched. And yet he whines, looking up at me as if confused at my just sitting here, typing away, while darkness is stalking the back yard. How can I be so blind, he wants to know, how sad, how tragic, how I won’t listen before it is too late. His whines are refugees from a brain where time and loss have small dominion, but where the tyranny of now is absolute. I get up and throw open the kitchen door, and he disappears down the cement steps, barking deeper and darker than I remember. I follow to find him perfectly still in the empty yard— the two of us in the twilight, standing guard.