Our Congo Here

 

Always I’ve got my head down, glued to a page, the screen, my plate, the indoor tsk tsk tasks tasks. Him, though. He goes outward, outdoors, driven by his rabid devotion to the wild.

Early a.m., after a quick dash to the workshop, “I went to let out Buster and the Big Dipper was standing straight up on its end.”

Or it’s after 10 and I’m already in bed and I hear, “The moon is up and has everything awash in white.”

On a cold morning, I must come see. I must stand right up next to the window and look. He says, See that down there? What do you see?

Where?

There, he says.

There?

No, there. There. Look.

It’s maddening. I can’t see. All I see is snow. He won’t give up. He even goes for a piece of paper and draws paw prints, oblong—although out where it’s blue the small depressions have drifted somewhat into oblivion.

“You’re good at things,” I say one day. “You take care of birds.” They dive at the windows, hit with a dull thump, fall to the ground dead or paralyzed with shock. Sometimes he’ll run out and rescue one, its eye vessels still pulsing, before the cat can get there. He puts it in his small zinc bucket up high on the porch wall, and later, when he checks, the bird has flown.

Do they make any difference in the world—such proclivities as his? Yes, they do. I can’t even halfway imagine what would happen were Elon and Donald to bring their wivessssss to sit quietly under the heavens and watch for hungry scampering creatures and wayfaring birds.

About the paw holes: I can only report to you that a bunny must’ve visited, that close up to the house. My husband was sure.