This morning was cold and my dog scented the flattened grass where the deer nested last night. The grass and the dark earth and the trees were all the same color, a pre-dawn tint of the crow’s wings. I stood a short time between a spruce and birch. The morning star was up. The windows of my neighbors’ houses were still black. “The boy inside me has survived,” I thought, “though he’s a factor of the northern wind; though he lives among the equinoctial apple trees of late December.”
Planet of the Blind 