The beaver dam is broken and for a moment it seems the lake escapes from out the whole wide heart it has been holding. And what is love but the possibility of life–? of fish to teem in welcomed spring and new mouths to feed we'd need not worry of the fall before. Is the miracle the coupling of two who made them in the dark–? or the rain that falls ten years ago to fool the ash tree into being one we fell further on the others we've begun with. What haplessness, to hurtle to the deep a step so small it hardly mattered, 'til we became not first but many more we decide now to lose count of. Did the beaver wonder at its lunacy–? or take as a matter of course the urgency of tearing down and throwing over mud the thing I can't help gnash my teeth into, sucking as if the sap could come with milk to nurse my unborn children. No, the beaver doesn't think but did despair over the torrent of a summer storm announced too late to let the channel in advance to spell what now has burst. Do you agree with what you can't control as the epitome of builders–? when what others know were homes aloft their heads, yours is a world; vision entire. "This was mine to do," the beaver thinks, as she considers her new shoreline– what was once weed and water well enough to feed them both is now laid bare to the perils of the sunshine. "There's nothing for it," she declares, shaking the admonition from her body onto places it might prove some use, such as her hands, her thoughts, her foresight: "Build again where we lost least; consider what's made limits– "Experience can hardly mount the principles of patience." "Mine is a loving touch," she fond remarks, as the day comes turning over under palms grown light beneath their labour: "The mud's much better than it was back then," she thinks– such silliness we'd best forgive her.
