Then early light. Why were you born, voyager? one is not born for a reason, though there is a skein of causes. out of yellowish froth, cells began to divide, or so they say, and feed on sunlight, for no reason. After that life wanted life. You are awake now? I am awake now. In front of me six African men, each of them tall and handsome, all of them impeccably tailored; all six ordered Coca-Cola at dinner (Muslim, it seems, a trade delegation? diplomats?); the young American girl next to me is a veterinary assistant from DC; I asked her if she kept records or held animals. A little of both, she says. She ’s on her way to Stockholm. The young man in the window seat, also American, black hair not combed any time in recent memory, expensive Italian shirt, gold crucifix fastened to his earlobe, scarab tattooed in the soft skin between thumb and forefinger of his left hand, is reading a Portuguese phrasebook. A lover perhaps in Lisbon or Faro. There should be a phrase for this passenger tenderness, the flickering perceptions like the whitecaps later on the Neva, when the wind off the Gulf of Finland, roughens the surface of the river and spills the small petals of white lilacs on the gray stone of the embankment.
What do You think about The Apple Trees At Olema (2010)?
