Mark a dotted line in time with the sound of a bird from your childhood, wakeful in the wood: "Here-here-here I am–!" foot in the sand, hair wet and cold enough to shade us both; sun on my back, including where I couldn’t reach it: I would bother asking someone else to keep from blistering and peeling, save I won’t because I never have before. -- You cry kneeling in the water over men who didn’t want you; remember boy-children who splashed and swam here once with crying voices that were just half-grown; are now more difficult to play with. My benevolent pasture and quiet instruction in the building of sandcastles and braiding of hair becomes suddenly insufficient in the face of your holding all my horror over finding a place in a world that will scold and could scathe you far more than I might help; you have escaped me and I myself have found scarce worthy purchase to hang my worth upon; nor protection, either, from the shifting notion of it: what have I to give you but my sympathy and the plaintive wailing of a petty hope that things might turn out any better for either of us than they already have? Shouldn’t I be happy–? Could anybody teach one how to be here and if it's as easy as it ought to be am I not condemned then further still–? and if what it must amount to is what’s tolerable, then suppose I add at the bottom of the list: wading through the river, here; singing something like a folk song, plucking yarrow, buttercups and shepherd's purse so the bears know where I am and decline the opportunity to eat me.
