Until later--

It's a good time to be quiet and dream, though I haven't left yet--not quite. The storm is almost behind us, though the sleet and ice and rain have gone on too long.

Last week a village boy died in an accident, and more than a third of our population turned out for the funeral. This week brought the sorrow at Blacksburg. I've been surprised to find that far-flung friends of mine knew some among the murdered. The world's web is so large, so small.

And we humans are such fragile little flies, dancing our dance in the streaming sunshine and the starlight that comes so far to be with us. How tragic to lose teachers in their prime, to lose our beautiful young women and men--even the murderer, a boy wandering in a maze of evil. He let go of Hawthorne's "magnetic chain of humanity."

So let's kiss our children, and hold fast to the "magnetic chain." How often that phrase comes to mind. Dear Hawthorne, what a reservoir of grief and spirit and beauty you are!

I go off to my fishing soon. Wish me luck, will you? The shining pools at Yaddo are quiet and still. Perhaps I'll come home with silver minnows, or a fish like a metal rapier, or a bouncing great whale...

I won't be posting again until I return. Perhaps spring will come by then. Pax tecum.

***
Here's something small and old, but a favorite lyric of mine--from somewhere in medieval England:

Westron wind, when wilt thou blow,
The small rain down can rain?
Christ, if my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!

***

Circles of water courtesy of Hilde Vanstraelen of Hasselt, Belgium and www.sxc.hu/.