It is not the way it used to be.Aunt Cleone is losing her memory,my father refuses to paint the cottage porch,

the rowboat rots in the yard. I amwilling to let go of what I remember,not completely, but let it open out

into the past and fill it and funnelforward to this place where I actuallylie on the end of the dock swirling my finger

in the water, watching the minnowsmove without seeming to move, invisibletwitches, one, two, three minnows the color

of sand. I must be in the middle of my life, the way I feel balancedbetween one thing and another. As if I have

no hands or arms, parting the world as it reaches my face. Like a minnow, goneon little wings, a blush of sand from the bottom.

Sometimes I open my eyes in the darkand it feels as if I'm moving. I lose
my loneliness, surrounded with dark, like water.