The gray streets and the green weeds, the cold smoke and the hot steam rising from the sewers. The long narrow lanes lined with cars and shadows, the trash day memorabilia scattered against each curb. The winsome smile, leading the way long after the end of the day. The clatter of claws on the sidewalks, the jingling of the tags that hang from the collar, the ruckus of all the other dogs, jealous of their fenced in territories. Here I listen for erratic traffic and the sound of my heart. Here I speak wordlessly to the dog in tandem, out where this careless world abounds.
The signal strength changes a little with each step, lexicons held in the drape of my shoulders, magnetic directions in tow of my seething spine. We move, we we wait, we adjust to the flow of feet and cars. I nudge her attention towards our mission-- the trot, the lope, the gait. The bouquet of stray moments and molecular transactions that beckon her nose are all side-bar and subtext. We are a traveling music, we own the margins and the swift transitions, however far from home.
Turn a corner, leave a block, cross a busy thoroughfare. The street lights buzz and flicker, the lit windows watch us as absent as any distracted eyes, and we sway amongst the weeds and trash. Plastic bags lift and speed through headlights and bitter grills. Leaves crunch and shift beneath our stride. Last night it was owls and strays, this morning a confluence of vultures and crows in the thin crisp dawn. The corner boys huddle in the stairwells, distracted teens converse loudly with unseen conspirators upon the pulse of microwaves passing through almost everything. We transmit on a more narrow bandwidth, the dice that Einstein's God doesn't play with. Our indelible mission, dismissing creation with our brisk and fearless wake.
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