There is an ocean in each of us, a tear of Neptune that together with its brethren devoured Noah and his sons and spared them the shame of drunkenness. And all of the two by twos renounced Heaven and form. And in the beginning it was the tide and breeze that succored our future being. Thus are we aqueous, saline and god's kin.

But we forget these things and the names of friends and occasions among others for no better reason than forgetfulness. This is the reason for earthquakes, hurricanes, politicians and our endless plummeting around the sun. We are forgetting these words as we read them and remembering them eleven years from now when they will still have no meaning but instead tread in the absurdity of it all.

It must be autumn there, and there is a veranda and a man with a rifle whose phobic glare underscores the severity of his wife's iron chin. And we are in the barn window wondering why our eyes are nothing like those in the daguerreotype of our great-grandmother, but it has been barred shut from the outside and the visitor will remember none of this.