Contact us at: whispernthunder1@gmail.comWhen the World Felt Small
~ Ann-Erika White Bird
It’s the morning air bending around yellow-haired
trees that reaches for us as we walk out onto the
concrete porch down the four steps that meet
sidewalk and earth. Autumn spreads its color
slowly and we begin our twenty minute walk to the
elementary school.
Up ahead on the corner is the dog we named Barkley. He likes to hide behind the now-barren twigs of the only bush in his fenced in yard and run out as we walk by, barking loudly. He’s tall enough to easily jump over the chain link fence, but maybe he doesn’t realize it, or maybe his barking threats are enough to satisfy him. The way we all jump when he rushes at us. We’ve learned to prepare for him, point him out in the yard, laugh and greet him. “Hello Barkley.”
There was the time last week when he saw the yellow cat and let us walk along against his fence line without so much as a glance. The orange Tabby changed her mind about crossing from street corner to street corner, darted back to sidewalk as though she thought she was narrowly escaping traffic, her yellow eyes orange and wide.
This morning, the sun took a path as we walk south, shining from the east and crossing our street to brighten the yellow leaves already changing on the trees like old ancestors, majestic and moving.
The leaves steadily fall in the glow of morning sun, twisting and turning and landing. It sounds like waves on the shore or the soft tapping of a child’s hand drum, erratic and rhythmic all at the same time.
We turn on the street and the sun lights up toward the house that belongs to the St. Bernard. He usually sits in the road, next to the curb of his home. His eyes are long and red and sad. He’s too tired to get up. Each day he is there my daughter will approach him, pet his head as he lays back hoping for a belly scratch. But today he is missing. Mr. Bernard, my son has nicknamed him. Mr. Bernard must still be inside sleeping, I tell my son. We continue to cross the busy intersection with the crosswalk that few drivers see until we are standing at its edge.
We cross another street to the long stretch to the school. Above us two geese blast their morning greeting. From their height below me my children don’t hear. They don’t look up. So I point and say loudly, Look! Geese! We watch them cross the imaginary sky-street from our side to the other. I wonder if anyone in the steady stream of cars looks up, feels like maybe they are missing out on something, self-confined and contained inside metal and cushion.
We finish the five blocks to school, little steps forward. Up ahead a bus turns right while the sun make his steady rise.