As flat- As flat and as dimensionless as wind and time I creep my silent alley out And race my shadows with the fading star...

"I CAN'T wait to see Ruth." Gram's trembling voice cut into the quiet of the room. She looked very small sitting in the Louis XIV chair that we had always called the "King's chair." It was big enough for my sister and me to sit in together, and Gram was so thin...

"ETTA? Etta? Are you there?" The old man moved restlessly in his old Morris chair by the window. "Etta?" His voice sounded harsh in the stillness of his room. "Etta, answer me."..

EACH time the bus turned a corner I stiffened myself, trying not to press against the woman sitting next to me. She was humming jerky bits of tune, stopping frequently to grin out the window at the cows in the field that moved by endlessly as the bus crawled over the ribbon of highway that stretched into the afternoon...

boy, boy, don't start so— don't listen in your sleep. . . it's only the wind the wind running pellmell in countless pieces between the branches...