ekleksographia

I was on my way to town to sit on a bench and admire the birds, when I met a donkey. "Lucy, where are you going?" the donkey asked me. "To admire the birds," I answered with a sweet smile. It is always important to treat animals with kindness. "Take me with you," said the donkey, so I climbed on his back. The light came down through maples upon us. The donkey ambled down into the aqueduct which ran through town—below the houses and train. So we walked and came upon a rabbit. (There were still rabbits in those days.) "Lucy, Lucy, where are you going?" "To town, to watch the birds." So the rabbit joined us, perched on my lap. And then a squirrel, a chipmunk, a crow. At last we came to a ditch in the forest—we could hear the cars going past up on the street, this was no wilderness mind you—and the donkey jumped and fell into the ditch, and then I fell in, and after me the rabbit, and then the squirrel, the chipmunk, the crow. We sat there a long time. After a while, I became aware of a girl sitting near us. Slowly, I realized she was Merry. She had not yet seen me, and I watched as she dragged air from one cigarette into another, and lit its end. "F–ing a–holes," I heard her say. Looking the other way I saw Ketzia. She knelt in the dirt, her hands held in fists. "Why, why, why," she wept. I got all the animals with me to sing:

I'll be your candle on the water
My love for you will always burn
I know you're lost and drifting
But the clouds are lifting
Don't give up, you've got somewhere to turn . . .

But they did not turn. They did not turn to me. I gazed at them a long while until finally, with the rabbit, the squirrel, the chipmunk, the crow, I got up and continued to town.

Of course, I left the donkey there in the ditch, for I knew that if I showed up in town riding on him I, like my sisters, would be considered insane. Which I wasn't.