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CEDARVILLE
REVIEW
20
Your pool is hibernating. All seven hundred and fifty gallons of void in the darkness beneath a green
cover, replacing the blue one you sun-dried, some months ago, on the lawn. Who knows what lives
there now? Amelia Earhart shares the space with Elvis and the yeti’s cute, furry, little grandchil-
dren. But they’ll be gone in May when you peel back the heat-trap ceiling – like the doors of Digory
Kirke’s wardrobe – for another summer getaway. Your island of water is magical.
From the patio, on windy nights, I’ve heard a trunk creak overhead – just like a hinge opening,
like the back door of the universe. I think maybe if I were brave enough, if I could climb up there
and feel around for the knob, I might fall through and see the world from the outside: all its mass
of raw wiring, inputs and outputs for each individual star, the depths of every ocean’s stomach
jutting out like an iceberg bummock but whipping and waving like a grocery bag in the wind of
the ectocosmos.
I’m sorry the forest is balding. Where, from the back deck, you used to see thick layers of trunk
and branch, Ash and Beech and Hackberry, now the earth’s bare, cratered scalp bristles like goose-
flesh under the autumn air. Trench-warfare-brown and Bobcat-yellow have chewed away, like
parasites, the green of Puck and Robin: taking from the living to give to the dead, replacing the
woods with mulch gardens and man-made fountain ponds. You can pity the children who will play
there – in their plastic worlds, not knowing what has been taken from them – and know that yours
were offspring of the outdoors, last of a dying breed.