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We step onto firm ground when Marilyn gets to the thing that is waiting, underneath everything she says, the thing she can't forget. Right there, in the middle of the air, we're standing on something solid.

I might have thought he was in another world, but it was me. I was young, true, but I don't think that sense of otherness has ever left me. I was moving, certainly; with Jahn, my wings, like a new butterfly, grew manifest. But I'd never, I believe now, leave the world of childhood.

My place has been staged all summer, chairs and umbrellas distanced 10 or more feet, for the few friends who have visited. And when they go, the chairs are empty, still, orderly and beautiful. Waiting...

When I had my own children I moved to Long Island. In the summer, I felt nostalgia, trapped in the airless frenzy of traffic, the earth paved over, asphalt heat waves, car exhaust. I dreamed of moving to the country, but didn’t see how I could uproot. I wished it would happen miraculously. Then it did.

It seems to me, amidst our tragic circumstances, person to person, we are connecting with one another, that there is a new world coming forth. It may take time, this birth. But I believe it is happening...

They are migrants. Their lives were saved. They came to a new place and added such beauty, a yellow different from the broom plants, the evening primrose, the Gloriosa lilies, Stella D’oros, the pale yellow lilies, names unknown to me, and the tiny yellow flowering ground cover, another gift of this place to me—its name also unknown. A shimmering time of yellows, the beginning of July...

Life is a relay race One passes the necessary tasks to the Next One... And we open our hands to receive them, those necessary tasks. We open our hands to touch the world—however we can.

It is six or so weeks ago that I entered clicking and sliding into the maze of Facebook. I have managed to set up that third profile. When it asked for my face, I was blank. My page sat that way, blank of face, until about a week ago when I clicked willy-nilly on something punctuated with many of my faces, my column of the Good God knows what—is it my story? Is it my private news feed? Is it my timeline? I’ve yet to understand...

When I got to midtown and parked the car, I combed the sheet of newspaper, four pages, double sided. There it was, the story of a man who had bought a shoe store during hard economic times. One shoe store became two, then three, then twenty-five. A chain of shoe stores! The man had accumulated wealth, and had the means to help others—which he did. “During hard times, expand,” is what he was quoted as saying.

I saw a red-tailed hawk last week, camouflaged in winter white, no red tail flashing—playing on the wind! I stopped my car on that country road where I rarely meet another traveler. The hawk tumbled like a crow. I’ve seen crows play on the wind. This hawk wasn’t hunting. It was having a wonderful time!...