Late at night when sleep is far off, pictures of lost creatures precess through my mind. Not a fond memory is found, just dead images of those whom I rarely think of consciously though I thought

much of them in life. Dogs, cats, cows, pigs, ducks, chickens, pigeons and people. And even the pheasant with no name that I shot twice, the first and only time I hunted. The first shot was to kill him but I missed the mark and the second shell was to put him out of his misery. I never hunted again and eventually gave up meat. I had no right to kill him though I was told it was my duty. Missing animals who I cared for that died because it was their time are easy to miss, or rather less painful to think about than the people I know who have left this world. Late at night is when they arrive like coming to an ark, without coaxing or luring they come because they are supposed to. Animals have their own personalities and desires just like people, they want to live. So they come, just because. Or do they come for me? It doesn't make me happy but perhaps it teaches me. Maybe their desire to live is what is to be learned from them, yet they die. To desire life is life. This is what the animals teach. When I see a wretched dog or cat on the street I know they want to take their chances to live miserably if that is all life has given them. Hunger, sickness and old age are better than no life. The people who pass through my mind are more abstract though they loomed larger in life to me than animals, but the abstraction is easy to digest in the psyche. They all are sadness to me as they are gone forever, both the animals and the people but they also represent the happiness that is life. The joy of suffering. Though at first site these images are black but as the mind’s eye adjusts to the dimness tiny sparks appear like floaters in the orbit barely discernible at first then becoming stable stars illuminating their surrounding darkness. My night thoughts shift from empty space to a flotilla of lit ships passing ever so slowly in a black peaceful sea expanding in my view and reaching to the farthest depths. I observe the phenomenon that is life itself and perhaps love.

By Buckspinster

From: United States