Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

by Annie Dillard

I have glutted on richness and welcome hyssop.

like the set of the wings of the monarch which climbed a hill by falling still.

Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.

I think that the dying pray at the last not “please,” but “thank you,” as a guest thanks his host at the door.

because as they age they suffer “the failure of the

nerve for excellence.”

How boldly committed to ideas we are in our twenties!

at twenty-seven I had all the license I thought I needed to engage the greatest subjects on earth.