When Gladys and Ed asked if they could include their dog in their engagement photo session, we said, “of course you can!” You may remember the lovely Alicia and Lawrence and Petey. This time the dog, who I think is named Chola, was much bigger. Too big to pick up, too big to squeeeeze! between their faces in mid-air, too big to anchor in one spot with anything as lightweight as a purse (all of which Alicia and Lawrence did with Petey). But not too big for smooches and loving cooing and the like.

After looking at these photos again, I got to thinking about the kind of love between humans that can expand to include a third, four-pawed party. This led me to read poetry about dogs, and I found the poem below, which I thought was wonderful. Especially the part about spiders breathing. I never thought about that before.

What The Dog Perhaps Hears

by Lisel Mueller

If an inaudible whistle
blown between our lips
can send him home to us,
then silence is perhaps
the sound of spiders breathing
and roots mining the earth;
it may be asparagus heaving,
headfirst, into the light
and the long brown sound
of cracked cups, when it happens.
We would like to ask the dog
if there is a continuous whir
because the child in the house
keeps growing, if the snake
really stretches full length
without a click and the sun
breaks through clouds without
a decibel of effort,
whether in autumn, when the trees
dry up their wells, there isn’t a shudder
too high for us to hear.

What is it like up there
above the shut-off level
of our simple ears?
For us there was no birth cry,
the newborn bird is suddenly here,
the egg broken, the nest alive,
and we heard nothing when the world changed.

There is a kind of love that doesn’t ever really go away, that lingers in the background through the years and emerges once again to surprise and delight you and change the course of the rest of your life. That’s the kind of love Beth and Rick have. They were together in high school, and spent a lot of time together at the Boardwalk. Beth says there are still tire marks in front of the house where she lived then, from Rick’s rebellious screeching spirals when he dropped her off after their dates. I love the idea of those marks, the past still visible in the present. Their engagement session started on the trestle bridge, meandered up to the river mouth, and ended up at the Boardwalk. We watched the years lift away as these two became teenagers again. Only now Beth doesn’t have to sneak in if she misses curfew.