Dust and Light

Before my sixth sense died at the tree of knowledge, I was as carefree as any child, any bird, any flower of the field. I was the new creation of every morning. All children are.

Only four, I tasted fingers inked with mulberry blood and powdered with Texas dust. I rested in the shadow of squat trees, gnarled as old men’s fingers, and cut grass with the swish of a mesquite switch I’d plucked from my canopy. These were my friends: the roadrunner; the scissor-tailed flycatcher; the grayed woman...