Across the street and down the block

Yesterday we took this Daily Walk, but today S has a cold.

february 10

Cloudy, cool and very still.

Sometimes, at night, my old dog Hattie

will lift her head to bark at nothing,

as if that nothing were silently

crossing the yard in the darkness

and then she'll listen hard and bark again

and it steals away. This morning 

I woke at three o'clock, and nothing

was standing there, silently watching me,

holding its breath at the foot of the bed.

I must have made some little noise

because my wife turned toward me and asked

'What's wrong?" "Nothing," I answered,

and suddenly nothing was gone

and from below us Hattie barked and barked.

Ted Kooser

Winter Morning Walks; one hundred postcards to Jim Harrison, 

Carnegie Mellon Press, 2000, page 90.

I talk about this much-loved book here.