Talking Out Loud

Sometimes, despite all the people that live close by, there's no one to talk to. No one to tell how the pigs were tearing around in the heat this evening, roughhousing with an old tarp left in their pen. How when I emptied my compost bucket into their trough two came running but the third continued to shake that tarp like a dog with a rag, twisting his head and snorting, sending waves of tarp over his head until he stopped short, unable to see. How with a grunt he shook the thing off at the same time that he tripped on it, sending pig and tarp careening into the trough, upending corn cobs and watermelon rind and pieces of squash which tumbled back down on pig backs like manna, like rain.

Or how the sun set in a welter of orange streaks just as a spoon bowl piece of the moon rose in the opposite direction, just as orange, and the birds hushed down in the heat; how the dark just sort of settled down like a muffling blanket over the silent grasses.

There was no one to listen with me to the breeze that blew high in the trees, setting the leaves rustling like mouse feet in old walls, while not a trace of moving air came anywhere near the ground. No one else heard the snuffling of the possum as it made its way over the little ridge behind my screen tent or tried to figure out whose name the owl was calling deep in the woods.

There was no one to watch the robin disappear into the winterberry bush or remark to about the heat dome hovering almost visibly overhead or the unusual silence of the songbirds. So, I'm telling you.