Three dogs also live in this house, but they were invited. There are squirrels living in the spare bedroom upstairs.
I give her a boost, balance her on her legs. Two hours later I wake up and she’s gazing at me in the darkness. I fix the leg, she rolls over and sleeps. I’ve climbed back under my covers already but her leg’s stuck underneath her, we can’t get comfortable. Inside the house she drops like a shoe onto her blanket, a thud, an adjustment. The dog turns and looks, waits to be carried up the two steps. Guys whose own lives are ticking like alarm clocks getting ready to go off, although none of us are aware of it yet. Space physicists, guys who spend days on end with their heads poked through the fabric of the sky, listening to the sounds of the universe. I learned it at work, from the group of men who surround me there. It has a moon with sulfur-spewing volcanoes and a beautiful name: Io. Jupiter is hidden among the anonymous blinks and glitterings. Over the neighbor’s house, Mars flashes white, then red, then white again. The Milky Way is a long smear on the sky, like something erased on a blackboard. In the porch light the trees shiver, the squirrels turn over in their sleep. She pees and then stands, Lassie in a ratty coat, gazing out at the yard. I sleep on my feet in the cold of the doorway, waiting. She totters on her broomstick legs into the hallway and over the doorsill into the kitchen, makes a sharp left at the refrigerator-careful, almost went down-then a straightaway to the door. She’s staring at me with her head slightly tipped to the side, long nose, gazing eyes, toenails clenched to get a purchase on the wood floor. The collie wakes me up about three times a night, summoning me from a great distance as I row my boat through a dim, complicated dream. Their lives were ticking like alarm clocks getting ready to go off, although none of us were aware of it yet.
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