On Return

Wash of light, on return. Simply the possibility of beginning again--that phrase, each time, a wonder. Make it new. Pound in London, Venice, New Jersey--St. Elizabeth's, yes. Always the return, as if our roots would grow into an impenetrable forest, thick from the inside (dense hedgery just behind 801 Michigan--1954 or so, pathway and burrow). The child's mind--everything possible, bewilderingly so? Reading Steinbeck, a few years later, other times, other places. Cannery Row--Monterey, an edge of the sea, opening onto gray-green swells...