Of course I am thinking the Lord was once young and will never in fact be old. And who else could this be, who goes off down the green path, Carrying… - Mary Oliver

And now you'll be telling stories
of my coming back
and they won't be false, and they won't be true
but they'll be real

Among the swans there is none called the least, or the greatest.

I am, myself, three selves at least. To begin with, there is the child I was. Certainly I am not that child anymore! Yet, distantly, or sometimes not so distantly, I can hear that child's voice — I can feel its hope, or its distress. It has not vanished. Powerful, egotistical, insinuating — its presence rises, in memory, or from the steamy river of dreams. It is not gone, not by a long shot. It is with me in the present hour. It will be with me in the grave.