My first night alone with Corky. Full moon. We walked in the late March cold and the ground was frozen. As she sniffed at the frozen earth I pressed my face against an oak tree in the park. The bark was rough and alive and I realized it had been years since I’d put my eyes against something so simple and true. What a dog can do, I saw, is give you back the joy of what the poet Robert Bly calls lightfooted empty places.
Planet of the Blind 