Remember

There are nights when we walk and my mind reels under the unexpected and sublime delicacy of our ambling. I find myself thinking, "Remember the color of this sky, the way the darkness comes like a slow kiss from the east and the orange light in the west illuminates the mountains which you ignored this morning as though they were little more than props or backdrop and not the things which people from all over the world come to see. Remember how at night, resting in front of the sunset, they are somehow impossible to ignore, big and indulgent to the eyes, their definition sharp and as perfect as only something that took millions of years to create can be. Remember the sound of a single duck flying overhead, the beat of its wings desperate and never silent, and how troubling and anxious the flying life of such creatures must be, not at all the serenity of the hawks which ride the thermals over the vast stretches of the golf course. Ducks in the water, though, paddling along the shore, breathing in the last rays of the day and exhaling the silence of night, are just as inspiring as hawks, no less spectacular than any creature living in this world. Remember the frantic scramblings of the rabbits to escape Duncan's playful lunge, and the one who came back, slipping under the chain link fence to stare at us and tease, retreat when provoked only to return again. And again. And again. Remember the silence and the emptiness of the park and how it felt like we'd earned it, this opportunity to be alone there once again with only the very soft crunch of the pads colliding from the players on the high school football field to remind us we are not alone, only distant. Remember, Curt––do not forget––the owl sweeping low over your head, its squat body gliding effortlessly on impossibly long wings over the snow, leaving behind neither sound nor wake as it passed. Remember Duncan running and running, free of his leash, across the field, chasing a mouse and then losing it. And the way he threw himself on his side and rolled, a grin far more wide than the sunset on his face, and the way the light caught his coat and was reflected all around, as though he were the setting sun and the coming night. Remember the footprints he left behind as he crashed forward, and how you refused to step on them and erase his path, knowing that in some bigger sense his walks in the park could never be erased because in a strange way the park loves him as much as he loves it. Remember how when Dunc had exhausted himself he laid down and spread his paws before him and watched the day slip into the past, seeming to memorize it and savor it as only the poets do. Remember these things. They are important. They will sustain you and make your life all the more rich for having walked it, loving and not forgetting a single moment. A single, quiet, gifted moment.