Shadows Twenty-Seven

Photo by Ellen Tinsley, DVM Judy and Wag coming out of the fog.

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Shadows Twenty-Seven October 7, 2018

For Ellen

How to tell it? I have a new friend
in the midst of my aging, when new
friends are rare. She’s a bird-watcher.
I’m a people-watcher. What I learn,
I scarcely know until I put it in my
books. Some mistrust other people
first and foremost. I attend to them
with my mind open. She talked to 
my dog, and Wag listened. Wag is
tolerant now of other people but
skeptical, too. It takes time for her
to trust, but the bird-watcher turned
out to be a dog-whisperer and spoke
Wag’s language, baffling to me. Mind
over matter maybe. Wag would stop,
hesitate, and then touch her nose to
the outstretched hand. Me she pulled
in, too, to tell of the sixteen eagle
nests around our Jordan Lake. I
asked how they would have fared
during our hurricane. She said they
have favorite places to hunker down
during storms, but we had four days
of wind and rain, so she’s checking
on them. She watches for them to
fly by, way up there and catches
them in her camera the way she
caught Wag and me as we walked 

toward her, both smiling, she says.