Half awake in my Sunday nap I see three green windows in three different lights-- one west, one south, one east. I have forgotten that old friends are dying. I have forgotten that I grow middle-aged. At each window such rustlings! The trees persist, yeasty and sensuous, as thick as saints. I see three wet gargoyles covered with birds. Their skins shine in the sun like leather. I'm on my bed as light as a sponge. Soon it will be summer. She is my mother. She will tell me a story and keep me asleep against her plump and fruity skin. I see leaves-- leaves that are washed and innocent, leaves that never knew a cellar, born in their own green blood like the hands of mermaids. I do not think of the rusty wagon on the walk. I pay no attention to the red squirrels that leap like machines beside the house. I do not remember the real trunks of the trees that stand beneath the windows as bulky as artichokes. I turn like a giant, secretly watching, secretly knowing, secretly naming each elegant sea. I have misplaced the Van Allen belt, the sewers and the drainage, the urban renewal and the suburban centers. I have forgotten the names of the literary critics. I know what I know. I am the child I was, living the life that was mine. I am young and half asleep. It is a time of water, a time of trees.

Three Green Windows