Brilliant Green Day by Yvonne McGehee, copyright 2004
      I  watched unnoticed through the window. It was one of those perfect late mornings, like days in books or movies or childhood. The sky was bright, clear, beautifully blue, with occassional perfect clouds; yet it wasn't too warm, a light breeze moved through the leaves, making the yard a live, graciously moving thing. The trees were in full leaf, new and perfect greens, darker than the grass below. The grass was brilliant, the sun behind it comming through as through a stained glass window, intense brilliant saturated color, with dark green inviting shady areas, moving and dappling with the breeze. In a parklike world, the trees were large with handsome trunks, birds sang and flitted and fed their children.
       Juno, a brilliant red borzoi bitch, was loose and free, all hope and expectation and confident belief in the infinite happy possiblities the world held for her. Juno always loved the grass, starting as a small puppy and continuing into her gazelle-like adult form. The small streams along the farm roads have shallow dirt bottoms and tall grass grows in them until they dry up in late summer. Juno would get down in them and run as fast as she could, water droplets flashing everywhere. Or, she would run through tall grass early in the morning with her head held low and her mouth open, scooping up the dew with her velvet-black muzzle and delicate pink tongue.
      Her weaned litter, about 9 weeks old, was in a smaller enclosure, a safe, pleasant and comfortable place under the locust and maple trees, playing. They too lived in a world of undaunted expectation, happy possibility, rich completion; a world naive of restrictions of circumstance, lost opportunity, closing doors, the destruction of illness and aging, the loss and death inherent in the turnover of the world; they too still lived in Eden. That splendid morning, Juno had been collecting bones and bringing them for her babies, cleverly leaving her offerings next to the fence right beside their gate. She is intent and intense. She is full of life and vitality and intelligence.
      Now, she has just caught a fat vole. She brings her fresh juicy offering to her puppies, trying to push it through the fence to them, but can't pass it through the fine mesh. Playfully, she tosses and catches it; first, next to her offspring; then, expanding into the moment, by herself, tossing, leaping, and catching, all four feet off the ground, high in the air as she can go, reaching out with speed and precision, with her long lythe muscular red neck and snapping white teeth, twisting and arcing her strong sleek red body; in the fullness of youth and health and happiness, she and her silk-furred toy fill that perfect space, with perfect joy. She is a red dancer in a green stage, her pretty puppies her audience and her future in the world. She whirls and twirls, finally laying down, facing her puppies, black lips parted and pink tongue panting, smiling, eyes shining, ears mobile, still occassionally tossing her toy lightly; rolling and luxuriating in cool grass under high green boughs, in freedom, in movement, in her healthy happy puppies, in her own body, in her own life.
      This is the moment of  happiness, of perfect joy. I am so moved, I want to stop and die right here; to end, right here, right now, because the world will never offer anything better than it has at this moment, at this instant of absolute joy. That would be impossible; we will never be just this way, all together here, again; not ever. Not like this. This is Juno in perfect joy, at one with her world, where everything she needs and can be is possible, on a brilliant green day.