Walking With Him

Autumn, and the smolder of inert sap fills every nose, ignites flameless fires. He buries his nose in a pile of russet and gold-flecked leaf, a squirrel scolds him from a high branch but he’s a sniff-happy hound and does not care. The woods are falling under a death-cheating spell, Spring will awaken them with a whelping lick. He, on the other hand, will fall sick and die. The path veers this way and that, man and dog crisscrossing a landscape until as scant as autumnal smoke they drift homeward.