The Goldfinch

by Donna Tartt

everywhere the ungainly sadness of creatures pushing and struggling to live.

I read late, creamy paper yellowed in a circle of weak lights, as the unknown darkness sped past, over the Continental Divide and out of the Rockies,

The smells, the shadows, even the dappled pale trunks of the plane trees lifted my spirits but yet it was as if I was seeing another Park beneath the tangible one, a map to the past, a ghost Park dark with memory, school outings and zoo visits of long ago. I was walking along the sidewalk on the Fifth Avenue side, looking in, and the paths were tree-shadowed, haloed with streetlamps, mysterious and inviting like the woods from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. If I turned and walked down one of those lighted paths, would I walk out again into a different year, maybe even a different future,

As long as I am acting out of love, I feel I am doing best I know how.