Practicing to Walk Like a Heron

Within the Moment of Indefinite Suffering

121 Within the Moment of Indefinite Suffering All it takes is a tick. You can be walking your dog. Your dog can be stopping to sniff a patch of jewelweed or pausing to pee on a post surrounded by poison ivy. You could be watching a swallowtail slowly lifting and settling its wings while resting on a swatch of crown vetch. The sun could be lost behind clouds, clustered in a cumulous mound of white or sinister gray, the moon could be full, waning, new, the stars moving across their scrim of deep space, everything still benign in its revolving threat. You could be sweeping the walk, passing under the pergola draped in wisteria, wedding veil, honeysuckle, or merely sitting on the bench beside the brook out back. Or taking a path through the park, joggers steady-stepping, or walking along the well-worn trail to the pond at the edge of town where you could be sitting under the willow, its branches hanging their braids over your wait for the sunfish to surface. It could all be beautiful: the day, the light, the breeze bending the tall grass. for the victims of the politics of Lyme disease ...