On the Brink

Dour Hour down at Pandora’s Tavern. Big beery debate breaks out among the local philosophers: How do you know when one moment ends and the next begins? Prolonged squabbling ensues. At last, one of the sages quotes an influential saying: “It is hard to find boundaries.” Perhaps that’s true, but I know how to draw the line. I pay my tab and go home.

I take the collie for a walk. We follow old stone fences that run through dark woods. We see and avoid lines of rusty barbed wire strung between senescent trees. We pass the iron bar of a long-dead surveyor lodged in a lichen-shrouded cairn. The snow is all gone from Paradise Hill and the first trillium wagers a bloom. Sometimes it’s not so hard to locate boundaries.