Places

LIKE AGE-OLD Celtic fairy trails and charged with shimmering tension, streets flow through the city, the country, and the world. Were I to step out the door now, put my foot on one of those currents rushing past my house, and let myself drift like a raft, maybe I would pop up again unexpectedly in the place that, many years ago, discarded me easily, quietly, and efficiently, as if it had digested me. That time, it retched out my dried-out, scrappy residue into the streets of the air, wholly unmoved by the question of where they might take me. That was long before it would have granted me leave to stroll in its alleys, to explore its sky, or to touch its people.

There were some things I collected there all the same: by the side of the road, for the few steps that the old place let me linger in it. A mulberry tree, for example, and snow-decked midsummer peaks, close by, far away, at the window of a kitchen. Heat shimmers over the steaming ground and lush, cotton-wool-cloudlike cherry blossom. A cicada song too, and the scent of jasmine. The soundscape of words that no one understands anymore at this end of the street. The hurried, amusedcheerful jump from one language to the next, to the next, to the next, and back again. As if words were roses, heavy with pollen, and speakers nothing more than bees.

Now eager to learn, I won the new place street by street. The collecting was easier this time, because I was already practiced. The objects were harder: Cobble Stone Street, for example, and rain-heavy midsummer clouds, close by, close by, at the window of every kitchen. Heat shimmers over the tiled stove and bell-clear, chiming Sunday music. A blackbird song (that was quite easy) and a scent of wood stain on picket fences. Only words were hard to come by. They didn't grow on stems here, nor on trees, bushes, or shrubs. I hummed and hummed in the old way, but the answer was always silence. So I built myself a boat, featherlight. Made shoes out of bell-chiming and out of mountain snow. In my bag I carried cherry blossom and blackbird song, and the mulberry tree was my staff.