RESTING

It’s good to rest. I like to stay next to you. You’re in a chair, taking my picture. You can see me resting next to the marigolds and the hosta and the funny dragonfly that doesn’t move. I am very relaxed but I’m not made of metal like the unmoving dragonfly. You and I are both resting, watching the humming hummingbird buzz over us and drink nectar from the tiger lilies. There are only a couple flowers left now, a few phlox and a one lilac bush that blooms in the fall. It’s called bloomerang. That’s because it blooms in the summer and then it blooms again. What a fooler.

It’s August, but there are already patches of red leaves over the ponds. The leaves wouldn’t turn red unless they rested. I do a lot of resting. You needed to rest today too because you cut up a tree that fell across the road. I sat in the back of the car and supervised. After you cut up the tree, you rested on the couch, pretending you were reading. When you rest, you are very quiet.

You know who is almost never quiet?

Red squirrels. There are a lot of different colored squirrels here. Black squirrels hide from the red squirrels. Red squirrels clitter and clatter and chatter and shake their tails as they leap from pine to pine at heights that stretch up to seventy feet. 

Or so. I can’t really tell how high the trees are because I’m a land-bound dog.

That means I’m a dog and I bound up in the air when I get excited but I cannot, no I cannot, leap from branch to branch. And doggone, I have the sense not to try.