It is a fundamental misperception," Fouts says to me, "to think human life has more value than any other life form.

I never said to myself, I am longing; that feeling lived at a level below language.

...the clear water the color of deeply steeped tea, surrounded by cattails and gracile grasses.

...tethered to the ground by quotidian conversation.... the window rosy with anemic November light.

Finally the dawn came, the sky fringed with pink, and the sun bright as a coin in a spill of rising red.

I watch the sky progress through its morning paces, the light turning from rose to saffron as the sun ascends, its rays like ribbons tangling in the tops of trees.

I looked up "skin" in the encyclopedia and confirmed that, sure enough, it is the human body's largest organ, a fact that suggests our surfaces are critical to who we are, not just the gateway to physical or spiritual depths but a profoundly important web of cells that, in protecting us, gives us form and function.

They cleared swiftly, dramatically, like a stage set or a movie; we went from black to stunning blue, the day emerging at once wet and crisp, the trees dripping jewels, the flowers drunk on drinking, their heads lolling with dizzy delight, rivulets etched into our earth, showing us which way the rain ran, downhill, of course, heading, all water, straight for our yet-to-be-pond.