Last thing, at dusk, I leaned outthe hotel window, like a seal sticking halfwayout of the concave comber it is riding.To the west, the slopes of land offshore,violet mist, like isles of the blestseen by a child of genteel flogging,and the water looked horizontal, a shiningscale balanced. First thingin the morning, I leaned to the waist out into thecold dawn, and rotated easttoward the rim of coastal mountain toothedwith sequoia and pine. And a crow cried outin heavy vigor as he beat alongthe face of the hotel, and when he came to mehe shied, going up on his hind legslike a rearing stallion. All was in place—the fitted box of the planet, the tieredsewing-table town. And when the van rushed me down toward thetideflats, the sun came overthe ridge to the east, its traditional direction,as the parent, most of the time, diesbefore the child. We passed the roomwhere she had breathed her last breath intomy mouth, I could not save it, I do notknow where it is—not in space, but held, by the weight of ournatal stone, within our homemadeatmosphere. And we passed the cottagewith the cobalt window,and I muttered what her children had shouted here, BlueWindow! Blue Window! Along the runway,wind poured through the coat of horsetailfur, and terns, in their skirts, flutteredabove the thumbnail and crochet-hook snails,and we knock-swashed up, excreting fumesof carbon fern and marrow—and inthe seat pocket, in front of me, werecrimped, furled buds, stemsbushy with fresh thorns,and her last flagon of perfume, its glassdove alighting to seize it, or lifting it up.