On the way home from the party at 5 am, I chatted with N about the nature of lyre birds and mockingbirds. We passed a man I've seen around town, a tall skinny blonde hippie accompanied by three dogs he addresses as if they are humans. The grey borzoi chased the little stray terrier back to their man, and the motley pack cut across the park, vanishing among the tree-shadows.

. . .

There were tentative expectations with the new moon, the new year, another Valentine's. I'd like to believe that I know where this road is going, where I'll be at the end of it, but I can't, and is that what terrifies me? I can bear the dark forest, the suppurating nights, the wolves howling for deer blood. I can endure parent-loss and the minor agonies of the home-forlorn. I moved across an ocean for love.

I can bear it all as long as the shadows never sway us from the path, as long as we can see the moonlight filtering through the forest's canopy, as long as the birds continue to sing in imitation of shared dreams.

. . .

I envy a bird's lack of self-consciousness, how its voice penetrates the stuff of silence, how it is a bird, even unseen, because it sings and sings and sings, regardless of an audience.

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