A small wind at 7 a.m. The sky is blue and clear, the air lighter than it has been for days. I am sitting in my darkened kitchen listening to the faucet drip. A squirrel scrabbles at the bird feeder; the small wind slips into the room through the open windows. Before I fell asleep last night, I read two pages of Rabbit Is Rich. Then, much later, I woke with a jolt. A thousand memories, forebodings, dreams were tumbling through my mind; and it took a long time for that dust to settle back onto the tables and pianos. To quiet my thoughts, I dug out my childhood trick of imaging myself on a swing, and now that it is morning again I find that I am thinking about this poem from A Child's Garden of Verses, which I loved very much when I was very small.


The Swing

by Robert Louis Stevenson

How do you like to go up in a swing,

   Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing

   Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,

   Till I can see so wide,

Rivers and trees and cattle and all

   Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,

   Down on the roof so brown—

Up in the air I go flying again,

   Up in the air and down!