Crossing Over

A February dog-walk

She’s a morning dog in this clear weather and we’re out first thing, crunching through the frost. I’m keeling from bad sleep and she’s like an arrow and there’s alarm call from February robins and the scant bustling talk of starlings roosting in the tall tree. Last night, the air ambulance flew south with Orion as a backdrop. The night before, I passed a pile of rubble that used to be a building. I can’t find the right book to read, can’t locate the right utensil. The dog stops at the hedge, as ever, nose examining every trimmed twig. The pickups pass loudly, their want so overt and identical, and it kills me that I’m visible to them, in my neighbourhood, in this tumult. Do you want to go to Canada or France. The question I’ve learned my baba was asked, ninety-seven years ago, at the age of nineteen. I imagine she received it on the dock in Hamburg, two ships waiting and which ramp will you ascend. The mourning doves are spry this morning in this spring that should be winter, their pointy, predator tails. The frost is hard but not enough. The fires that haven’t stopped burning, that went below ground. These things I didn’t know, but knew I wanted. From the father of the man Baba would meet and marry soon after arrival, these passed-down telephone words: We have to leave Ukraine because it will never know peace. I’ll learn the language again, I’ll write the letter and maybe even send it. Mom’s reply after sharing with me this treasure: And wasn’t he right about that. I assume I’m done, even effect doneness, when I know there’s always more. The scant record unfurls into this dawn, trucks ferocious, cheeks stinging for a change. We have a lot of routes we take. Mostly I let the morning dog decide them. My phone pulses in my pocket these days when there’s nothing coming in. Grey squirrel on the fencepost, swishing language of the tail, saying something I’m lucky enough to be around for and much too new to understand. This winter, I take joy in the cold, relish coming storms. The dog stops walking, looks across the road and then at me in purple sunrise. Cities bombed, cities of children. Leaving in haste, in emergency. Unable to leave. To lose the trail of sleep, woozy and delirious. To meet all that must be met. We wait for the interminable, excruciating traffic to pass and then we cross the road.