And the light fell here and there, and if you can See it, it will find you and settle behind your eyes and fill them and swell behind them and only then when you know it is there and you know that the light is everything and the light is salitter, then your mind will break from canon and you can See, for somewhere back inside was it not you, too, who poked at earthworms in sullied tennis shoes, praying for the day you could comprehend the will of God and the division problems sitting on your bedroom desk.

The last stretch of wood in the purlieu stands outside my window. Soon, it too will be gone, but I could not save it, for perhaps I am the only one who Sees.... I will tell you now that I have witnessed beautiful things. It sounds like some banal, trite thing from a vapid allegory, but I, perhaps, grasp nothing so much, clinging, clutching, as I do the last sanctum...

I raised myself in those woods. I created worlds. It is a mirror. Stop. Walk away. Go to the gate. Open the gate, hop the first limb down the slope, pad over the gulch with the branches that the old man Ritman throws in, mind the gap, find the soft sand, find the creek, jump the creek, jump back over, up the little knoll there, weave the fallen roots of the poplar from three summers ago, thorns on the left, pad oblique to the hill up to the right, weave the thorns, quiet now, don't let the neighbors spot you there

\they wouldn't understand\

pass the stretch of black sulfur mud and earth, yes, now you can breathe, up there's the bank again, past the little copse of magnolia and the rotten wooden door leaned against the slanted tree that transverses up the side of the gully, let's sit here, no I'm not sure what it is, a wood box set out here in the ivy, chipping sky blue paint in the profundal lake of emerald, here's the bank now, sprawl in the chilled sand in front of where the water bends to the right, into the black pool, go in, no, I'm scared, but I'll climb the gorge with you; go to the right, there it is up there, hands on cool rock, duck the fallen branches crosswise over the top of it, find a spot, cling to the leaves and the dirt and the earth slanting up from the bowl of earth and gorge, and climb, and fall, and climb for your life, and then with a final burst, clasp the cusp of the rim of the earth and pull yourself up, and here is the peak and sit there when the leaves turn orange and gold and you are seven years old you are seven hundred years old and you sit at the top of the world and breathe and live and See.

Shifting light, dappled light, golden green light, distending, gushing light, surging light, soft light warm glowing from underneath, beating pulse of the earth and the warm green and the warm green gleam and blush, glowing, glowing light, glowing everything, sheets of light slice deep and clean like panes of glass, sheets of light hit your eyes and fill them and swell behind them and brim behind them.

And the wind. Ten thousand souls breathe deep and exhale.

And here is the world here is its beating heart and flesh and soul and it is peace and strength and silence and it is death and it is life and birth and breathing and lungs swelling and lungs swelling through the ground and everything has lungs and everything bleeds.

Go to the woods and then look in my eyes, and you may have seen what I have Seen but you will never know what you have lost.