A pond will deepen toward the center. Like a plate, we traced its shallow rim; my mother steering my inner tube past the rushes where I looked for Moses. We said it was a trip around the world. In China, we wove through curtains of willow that tickled our necks. Let us do that again and we'd double back, idle there, lifting our heads to the green rain. Swallows met over us later; I dreamed of flying with them. We had all the time in the world. We had the world. How could those trees be weeping?
