| Pussy Willow Down fur-lined avenue brushing the sleep from her young woman eyes. Runs for the train --- see, eight o'clock's coming cutting dreams down to size again. -Jethro Tull, Pussy Willow It�s easy to hide yourself among the tall trees and short ferns, to conform your body to the brown rough bark, to make your feet into roots that dig like worms through the soil, to stretch your fingers up to the sky, fight with hundreds of trees so your green leaves can be made transparent by the sun. It�s easy to lose yourself with the gray moss-covered rocks in the brook by the trees, to sit for hours listening to the babble of water until the sound mixes with the rush of blood in your ears and makes the songs the same, so that you are the stream that flows over rocks and clay, through the oily silver scales which gleam a glossy red and blue, and ends in the pond that is dying, starving itself of oxygen by having too much life. It�s harder to find yourself in the brick buildings made of linoleum and steel, to peel away from the river of people that flow together like a school of fish, to push against the avalanche of rules that fills your eyes and ears and mouth. It�s hard to pick yourself out of the faces, to tell which is yours and which belongs to the girl that sits next to you in fifth period. |