A Very Long Time Ago, Grandmother Had

Dogs Are Mute And Obedient, But They Have Watched Us And Know Us And Can Smell How Pitiful We Are.

Sophia And Grandmother Sat Down By The Shore To Discuss The Matter Further. It Was A Pretty Day, And The Sea Was Running A Long, Windless Swell. It Was On Days Just Like This--dog Days--that Boats Went Sailing Off All By Themselves. Large, Alien Objects Made Their Way In From Sea, Certain Things Sank And Others Rose, Milk Soured, And Dragonflies Danced In Desperation. Lizards Were Not Afraid. When The Moon Came Up, Red Spiders Mated On Uninhabited Skerries, Where The Rock Became An Unbroken Carpet Of Tiny, Ecstatic Spiders.

Before We Left, Grandmother Talked A Lot About The Arctic Night We Would Fly Through. 'isn't It A Mystical Word, "arctic"? Pure And Quite Hard. And Meridians. Isn't That Pretty? We're Going To Fly Along Them, Faster Than The Light Can Follow Us... Time Won't Be Able To Catch Us.

Grandmother Walked Up Over The Bare Granite And Thought About Birds In General. It Seemed To Her No Other Creature Had The Same Dramatic Capacity To Underline And Perfect Events - The Shifts In The Seasons And The Weather, The Changes That Run Through People Themselves.

One Ought To Have The Right To Have A Secret And To Spring It As A Surprise. But If You Live Inside A Family You Have Neither.