A Man, A Dog & How to Form Up a Life

She watched him from the side of the road, there at the woods, watched as he called to his dog.

How the snow was deep, how the ditch was deep.

How the dog dug.

She watched how the Farmer came.

Waded down by the fenceline, snow up to the waist, bent and filled his arms with his dog.

That is how he did it, how he formed his life into something hallowed. He bowed his head, bent his knees, gathered the needs into him, arms stretched open and towards the sky, and he knew the moments they were that, all this fresh grace.

He knew that it wasn't just this once bending that would shape him.

He knew that it is only what is done consistently that forms us at all.

The bulk of the beast filled his arms and it was all the loyal years that bound the man, that loosed the dog, and she didn't think he felt any weight at all.

Sometimes love is that, all the weightlessness that fills our arms and shapes us cross-bent.

After he hauled his dog out of the deeps, the Farmer knelt down and into that canine of his.

Laid his head on the dog's, laid down beside him, laughed and rolled and pulled him close and all this joy, all their ties, it filled the woods and the sky, and she could feel it, the kind of daily ways that formed a man like this.

She almost turned, could hardly bear to watch a love like this.

Wild and cruciformed like God's.

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