Night thoughts

I sat in the yard swing this evening, just at that late twilight time when the color is washed from the sky, when there is not a breath of air that you yourself didn't just exhale.
A rain crow or maybe a Mourning Dove was the only sound I could hear other than the soft squeak of the swing chain as I slowly swung back and forth.

Gracie, the Dalmatian bitch with one blue eye and one brown sat on the ground before me, cadging a rub and scratch on each forward swing. Poor girl, she sheds far too much to be allowed into the house, her domain rather the fenced back yard where she sleeps in one corner of the shop/storage building. In the summer she'll lounge under it in the cool gray dirt, during cooler weather she'll be found stretched out on the front porch soaking up the heat from a feeble winter sun.
When ever it is, she's always right at my side when I'm out there (or in my lap if I'll allow her) rubbing her head against me, keeping her bi-colored eyes fixed upon me, like a lonesome lover, begging me silently never to go away, yet knowing I will, and hoping I'll one day return. I always do............faithfulness should be rewarded.

Then a rice burner with angry exhausts snarls his way around the corner and down the road, disturbing the evening, and, after one last scratch and rub to the pooch, I walk heavily into the house.