The lobster boat pitched and slapped in the chop as they drove hard out of harbour, and westward, beneath the blackened, limestone cliffs. Here and there, two or three shags stood together, on ledges high in the rock; and higher still, puffs of green and yellowish grass appeared.
There was a time when men ran as wolves through the forest by day each winter. Not until the sun sank low in the sky would they wander back to town, slough off their wolf-skins, then hang them by the door with a “Honey, I’m home.
The land that raised us, she and I, was scraped free of myth, tilled and squared and poisoned until there were no more clouds of birds blotting the sky, no sandhill cranes swimming prairie seas.
The little girl often squatted herself on pavements to observe the movements of ants in crevices. Held her fingers out to rain drops, watched them stipple the petals of hibiscus, pearl the stalks of flames-of-the-forest.
Consider the city’s skyline against the enigmatic black canvas of night. Consider a shadow creeping up on the horizon. Consider an Enchantress. A Reason. Consider the attraction of a Beckoning, just out of reach.