The world is an endless landscape of symbolism. Under a poet’s eyes, a deserted street resonates like a melancholic verse. I hear the secret sound of those syllables when the middle-aged man passes by my house. He moves slowly. The companion, an ash colored poodle, often smells the steps of the seasons. Truly, he sniffs the dark wet grass, shrubs and hidden tracks. Time seems a perpetual journey taken with every careful step. The man follows the animal with the cadence and patience that a father has for his ailing son.

I don’t know how much an animal can sense the most intimate state of the human complexities. That dog, however, seems to dive into the shadows of his master and manages to float above the twilight waters of his solitude.

It is a beautiful sight and yet a sad one – a man and his old friend going up the street like two old walls ready to crumble.

They stop at the corner. Which direction to take? Does it matter? It does because the man leans over and asks the dog with fatherly gentleness:

– Do we go straight ahead or turn left?

A car comes and the dog waits. Geordie hesitates for a moment than crosses the street stretching the leash. His flanks move with the slowness of old muscles worn-out by age. Inclined onward, he appears to stumble on his own legs, trying to decipher the origin of what he smells, like a investigator of souls and mysteries.

I don’t always see them. They generally walk toward the end of the day. I assume after supper, at which time I’m at the computer or reading. Sometimes I catch them when my eyes, tired, ask for a break.

I look at the garden. My glaze follows the birds through the quivering colors of the flowers where, invisible, the angels of Spring cross each other in a splendid, graceful stir of wings. Sometimes I only hear the stillness of leafs bouncing with the breeze. Other times I see them, silhouettes joined by a silence as if united by an umbilical cord.

Not long ago, the man was pushing a baby buggy. Was there a gift of a new life? But his hair, touched by a lunar vehemence would suggest a dream finally carried through, a late paternity. Inside the baby buggy, however, a woolen blanket was all he had.

The question produced a blush. The voice that answered was calm, assertive and gentle.

– Geordie gets tired easily. When I see that he cannot walk, I put him in the baby buggy – said the man with unequivocal sadness.

They continued their journey, slowly, up the street. A tepid sun floated above the trees. The man and the dog disappeared into a zone without delineated borders, in a sketch of transcendence.