Fetch

dog leaps
toward the falling stick—
drops color the sand


Admit it, none of us can live in the moment like our dog, Mr. Darcy is doing in this combined photo. Leaping, stretching, cannoning toward some crummy bark-peeling stick in the great Ohio River. What you can't see in the picture is a lone tugboat pulling six empty barges upriver toward Louisville, or perhaps even Pittsburgh, PA. These last few days, the solitary tugboat captain has plowed hundreds of miles up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers, pulling over to the bank at night and sleeping to the lapping of the gentle river waves. It's a peaceful scene, dusk coming on, the moon veiling and unveiling herself with clouds, and the far bank--low-lying farmland--empty and quiet. Behind us large Cave-in-Rock pours out darkness and gathers its secrets. A few hundred yards west, past the bend in the river, a car ferry has just set off for Kentucky.

But Mr. Darcy lives forever in the moment, the way we should be in haiku, experiencing to the hilt this one precious moment which is really all that we have.