Windows

From the train window, the sheep are at peace, and who wouldn’t be, late in the sun, their light slanting the shadows into which they gradually slide, thus slipping into something larger, cooler, darker—it’s a move that leaves an invisible yet indelible mark, one that says I loved this, long before and long after it’s gone.

A child, nine or ten, standing at a window looking down on a city street is an anchor—into or back toward—or endlessly the archive of—so much—mythology, perhaps—auspices and auguries—as simple as it is, the child thinks, the window’s transparency is precisely its incomprehensibility—and then, oh, I see, she says, and truthfully, and the window is gone.

But I have loved everyone. Because I was raised in a room largely of windows. And outward of them, their views. A view can, in itself, enable love—and in itself can prove it. We’re in and of an age that demands proof—and then that little explosion in the trees—it’s just a bunch of birds, perhaps, though that might be too illustrative.

Stairs & Windows

Something happening on a spiral stair spirals the air there, and the green out the window gives in to the swirl, turning into fall, and a gust of falling leaves bursts in through the open window, spinning down through the stairwell just as the stairs themselves are winding their way upward.

The stairs, again spiral, and beyond them, the window, which again is open, and so a breeze follows that spiral downward, revolving the window on its vertical axis, as well as the person out there on the sidewalk, reflected in it, who is now heading off in the opposite direction.

That stair where you never expected it—up the core of a pear, for instance, or, suddenly, there instead of your little finger, and now responsible for the future.