Sometimes, Walking With A Friend, I Forget

A Lot Of Sad Things Have Happened To My Friends' Children, People You Knew As Babies. They've Been Killed Or Become Crazy Or All Kinds Of Tragic Things. There Are Some People Whose Children Haven't Talked To Them In Fifteen Years. There's All Kind Of Meshugaas In This World.

This Hill Crossed With Broken Pines And Maples Lumpy With The Burial Mounds Of Uprooted Hemlocks (hurricane Of '38) Out Of Their Rotting Hearts Generations Rise Trying Once More To Become The Forest Just Beyond Them Tall Enough To Be Called Trees In Their Youth Like Aspen A Bouquet Of Young Beech Is Gathered They Still Wear Last Summer's Leaves The Lightest Brown Almost Translucent How Their Stubbornness Has Decorated The Winter Woods.

The Word Career Is A Divisive Word. It's A Word That Divides The Normal Life From Business Or Professional Life.

The Women's Movement Was Coming, But I Didn't Know It In 1956-1957, When I Began To Write.

My Language Limitations Here Are Real. My Vocabulary Is Adequate For Writing Notes And Keeping Journals But Absolutely Useless For An Active Moral Life. If I Really Knew This Language, There Would Surely Be In My Head, As There Is In Webster's Or The Dictionary Of American Slang, That Unreducible Verb Designed To Tell A Person Like Me What To Do Next.