Kind Sir: These Woods

Kind Sir: This is an old game that we played when we were eight and ten. Sometimes on The Island, in down Maine, in late August, when the cold fog blew in off the ocean, the forest between Dingley Dell and grandfather's cottage grew white and strange. It was as if every pine tree were a brown pole we did not know; as if day had rearranged into night and bats flew in sun. It was a trick to turn around once and know you were lost; knowing the crow's horn was crying in the dark, knowing that supper would never come, that the coast's cry of doom from that far away bell buoy's bell said your nursemaid is gone . O Mademoiselle, the rowboat rocked over. Then you were dead. Turn around once, eyes tight, the thought in your head. Kind Sir: Lost and of your same kind I have turned around twice with my eyes sealed and the woods were white and my night mind saw such strange happenings, untold and unreal. And opening my eyes, I am afraid of course to look-this inward look that society scorns- Still, I search these woods and find nothing worse than myself, caught between the grapes and the thorns.