Night has not yet relinquished its hold on morning. The kitchen windows are dim with fog, with the vague breath of rain. A thrush pours her melancholy tune into the green heart of spring. Who else is listening?

Today, for the last time in my life, I got out of bed at 4:30 a.m. to drive my son to a high school sports event. He'll be running in his final Maine state track meet today on Mount Desert Island, but I can't attend because Tom and I have so much house- and graduation-prep stuff to do and so little time together in which to do it.

Just now, everything feels like the last time . . . the fading lilac blossoms, heavy with rainwater; the teenage crows shrieking as their parents push them out of the nest; the old dog asleep on her towel. My words are clumsy, peripheral--no revelation, no clarity. Simply, they are what they are--the sounds of a mother whose youngest child is leaving home, the sounds of a home on the brink of not being home, the sounds of a traveler slowly picking her way among the stones of an overgrown, obscure trail.