As if he might know somehow, crazy to think it possible, his knowing.

We pause, we move from pavement to grassy overgrowth bordered by rotting fenceposts and barbed wire, rusty.

We pray the subdivision doesn’t take over.

I promise, there’s no way a Labrador might know.

The way the cousins expected in between pickin’ berries and lookin’ out for snakes and snake holes to jump from red clay rutted dirt road hearing the roundin’ roar of engine.

But, we did when my grandma said so,

We “HIT the ditch!”

And so, when the big brown lab causes the pull of his leash towards shallow grassy valley bordered by fence,

I go.

We go. We linger, unconcerned over passerby’s questioning over a dog and a woman just standing, “sitting”, pausing in the ditch.

This, my friend, my follower, my one curiously intrigued is this Georgia girl living elsewhere’s happy way of life.

We go, we consider it happy, this little bit of remembering, we’re happy in it.

And oh, the joy of the careless acknowledgment of such simplicity and perhaps, simple minded.

Oh, joy!