Dogs Can’t Edit

I had been without A/C for three days.

Finally, three guys showed up to clean

my unit.  They worked for forty-five minutes

or so, charged me ten bucks and left

before the first storm arrived.  I walked

out to my wife’s beauty shop, called the

American Salon for reasons unbeknownst

to me, before the first storm hit.  I have

seen torrential down powers in NH and

even in Saudi Arabia and they get your

attention wherever they happen, but

humans can put parentheses around these

storms: they will have a beginning and an

end. But dogs cannot edit sentences like this. 

I have only one old dog now.  He is an arch

watchdog, but if anyone in the family looks

at him cross-eyed he cowers and slinks off

someplace. He is frightened to death of

thunder storms. He was just outside the

sliding glass doors of my wife’s shop, shivering

with fear. Every time there was a thunder clap

he let out a little yip. I went out and tried

to console him but when I touched him

he jumped.  So I just stood beside him

looking out at the strings of water off

the corrugated roof. It was like looking

out through those clear plastic strips

over the refrigerated dairy case.  But

God knows what the world looks like

to a scared dog who can’t edit his life

sentence.  I feel the temperature dropping.

Fear is fear.

FG April 2015 

Added "I feel the temperature dropping." to coalesce the A/C, dairy case and zero-at-the-bone dog-style.

I have a hard time editing on Blogger.  All I can do is delete and replace.