Subject

That dog I hear barking in the night: disturbed by a stray cat, perhaps, or a racoon; or some early riser or some restless insomniac gone out to stand, as I have, gazing into the darkness under clouds now emptied of their rain, and wonder at the timeless silence disturbed only by the barking of this dog. What is the thing I am not letting go, nor seeing clearly? What memory or prescient vision or random fear lies under this placid surface and haunts the back of my mind like an unremembered name or a line that will not come into a poem? What is it that I am not saying even to myself? That I cannot say, or will not say? Some message seems to lie in the sound of that single dog barking. The sound is the essence of clarity. It is my mind which creates the obscurity. Even the darkness of the night is less dense, less arcane, than this void in my thoughts.

Brief Complaint

Taking care of the elderly is time consuming.

Taking care of an elderly person who has a severe back problem is exhausting.