You should see the sky right now. All the grays, the shapes, smooth blue gaps, a blinding white-gold place softly circular behind the silver in the west.
Starlings are nesting under the house eaves. I see them come and go from my bedroom window upstairs. And when I came out just now one of them panicked away.
I've carried my wooden stool to the hummock next to the water--the edge of the overfull pond--to watch the llamas chew their oats and to feel the wind and to watch the geese circle down for the evening, with all their noise.
As always, Lorenzo has inhaled his grain and started on Fernando's portion before Fernando can even be coaxed over to this side of the pasture. Fernando is slow, contemplative in all things. He stands now watching Lorenzo eating, holding his ears back--from annoyance, one would suppose. Fernando so rarely gets his grain. On the farm I used to stand between them and make sure each got his fair share.
Fernando is sleepy anyway. This is a late feeding, just for company. They've had the pasture grass and yesterday's hay to nibble at all day. He's yawned twice now--something to see, with his long elder underbite--and he closes his eyes, waiting. And now he steps quietly toward the feed bowl, and Lorenzo steps away to start in on the hay. But Fernando glances down and then up, stares at me so intently I have to walk up to the garage and get him another scoop of oats. While I'm gone, the two of them face one another, staring each other down, ears laid back. The dynamics of llama table relations, the hierarchy of their complicated etiquette.
The dark gray moves up in the sky and covers the light.
Apple lies at my left ankle, chin on her paws, eyeing the bowl of pumpkin custard I've placed in the grass so that I can write. In the field across the creek, Sally plunges her snout into one squirrel hole after another. Water sounds--the intense rush of it over our little rapids in the creek and the loose splash of pond water out the overflow pipe into its meander through the pasture.
Lorenzo guards the hay. Fernando turns and walks off, head to the ground, gobbling up mouthfuls of new grass. Now Lorenzo follows, drinks from the pooled pond water, makes his way up the slope to the trees, and bed.
***
I wish it could be Saturday evening forever.
We did a few chores before supper. I pulled back the tarp from the woodpile alongside the house near the back door, and then split what was left of the splittable juniper. Brian hauled the remainder, the oversized twisted chunks of juniper and cherrywood and mountain mahogany, to a place near the garage. Then he gathered up the split pieces in a leather sling and brought them inside, and I stacked it near the woodstove. We're unlikely to have many more fires.
7:44:11 PM 
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