This morning I went outside early to do some chores, and I am glad I did. It was something renewing and refreshing to be outside in the clear still cold alive morning air. The crows were raucously calling all about in the distant fields. The pond lay muted and silent in its bed of weeds and grass, mysteriously going down into winter death. The horses stood quietly about the hillside in the back field, going about the business of grazing. The sun was a muted blaze through curtaining clouds.
I cleaned the horse stalls, then the chicken coop, as Mugsy the cat ran to and from and about me. I was his epicentre as he rushed off to investigate first one and then another of the fascinating morning smells and sights and sounds, then rushed back for some rapturous hugging and kissing, love shining out of his devoted eyes. He was my companion as I went to the manure pile to dump my wheelbarrow load, as I went to a new stall, as I went to the chicken coop. As I shoveled out chicken poop and shavings, the chickens sat on their roosts and watched and muttered fussy, half-alarmed, complaining remarks on what I was doing all the while.
In the horse barn, I cuddled Beebles the turkey, the half-formed, feeble one with one blind eye and another that can barely see, visibly underdeveloped compared to all the others. The biggest tom stalked about, tail fanned, feathers standing straight out all over like a bristly pinecone, his absurd and solemn face framed in his magnificence of feathers, watching me carefully. The whole earth lay still and silent. Winter is imminent.