Beagles and Bugs

By Peter Bowden

The beagle had never learned the names of things, but he knew their music. The grass sang when the wind bent it low. The porch boards hummed beneath the warm weight of the sun. And the air was always full of invisible bells. On this particular afternoon, those bells took the shape of bugs. They stitched the light with wings and whispers, and the beagle stood very still, nose quivering, tail already writing hopeful sentences in the dust.

A fly passed. The world narrowed. The beagle sprang, ears flapping like loose pages in a story being told too fast. He missed, of course. He always did. But missing was part of the joy. He chased the buzzing commas and the darting exclamation points across the yard, leaping shadows, pouncing on patches of sun, convinced each time that this next jump would be the one that mattered. The grass bent. The day laughed. Somewhere, a cicada rattled like a tiny box of secrets.

At last he stopped, tongue bright, chest lifting and falling like a bellows stoking a small, happy fire. The bugs drifted on, untroubled, uncatchable. The beagle lay down among the clover, listening to the world settle back into its ordinary miracles. He did not feel defeated. He felt rich. For in his simple, beating heart, he had not chased insects at all, he had chased the glittering, vanishing wonder of being alive. 

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