A Tumultuous Morning

August 20, 2015

This morning at five thirty the dogs woke me up with a barrage of barking, loud broken edged shards of fragmented sounds assaulting my sleepy ears as I lay in the bed trying to avoid consciousness. Last night I was kept half awake by the sounds of an inundation of rain pouring on the tin roof. It sounded as though it might actually cave it in. Our three dogs sleep in the sun room on the front of our house. The sun room at one time was the brightest sunniest room in the house but after twelve years of growing the trees I planted adjacent to the front porch have grown beyond all expectation and somewhat cloistered the room. The room now is a place of shadows that the sun never sees. Most nights the dogs sleep there without disturbance. This morning long before the sun began to ascend into the morning sky the dogs began to bark urgently and bang their paws against the glass in the front door as though the devil himself was in the driveway stalking around in the darkness. They are much more attuned to the nocturnal goings-on than I am by far so I trust their instincts and usually give in to them no matter what the time, night or day.

Who knows what is lurking around in the darkness of early pre-dawn just out of reach of the porch light? Bears, raccoons, opossums, mountain lions, strange unearthly creatures, goblins and hollow eyed monsters with sharp teeth lurking, silently pressed against the back sides of trees elsewhere out there in the darkness. There is an ancient abandoned family cemetery just beyond the boundaries of our property immediately up the hill, so who knows. When I finally give up on sleep and shuffle through the house to open the front door the dogs explode out into the night barking and carrying on like they were possessed, as though they were shot from cannons. It could be a huge black bear robbing the sunflower seeds from the bird feeder that disturbs the dogs. The bear turns slowly and grins at me with his long sharp white teeth glistening in the dim light as I foolishly stand on the front porch in my underwear. This has happened before! This morning however, there was nothing!

After five or ten minutes the dogs return to the front porch and start to bark again as urgently into the dark interior of the house as they did earlier to get out. Once more I get out of bed and let them in. They are covered with grass seeds, mud and drenched from head to foot after racing through the bushes, grass and muddy bogs left from the deluge or rain last night. They all burst into the house yipping, snuffling the air and enthusiastically shaking their fur dislodging bits of detritus and God knows what else onto the carpet and floor! They are all hungry, insisting on being fed, excited and demanding attention as though they had not seen me for weeks. I fed them and made a pot of coffee as the darkness was slowly chased away by the morning sunlight coming unhurriedly up above the small mountain across the creek.

Here now at nine o’clock in the morning the dogs are on the screened in reading porch relaxed and calmly sleeping on their bed. An early afternoon nap for me tantalizingly lurks on a not too distant horizon.

tbd