Toward the End of Time
Chapter One
The Deer
FIRST SNOW: it came this year late in November. Gloria and I awoke to see a
fragile white inch on the oak branches outside the bathroom windows, and on the
curving driveway below, and on the circle of lawn the driveway encloses-the
leaves still unraked, the grass still green. I looked into myself for a trace of
childhood exhilaration at the sight and found none, just a quickened awareness
of being behind in my chores and an unfocused dread of time itself, time that
churns the seasons and that had brought me this new offering, this heavy new
radiant day like a fresh meal brightly served in a hospital to a patient with a
dwindling appetite.
And yet does the appetite for new days ever really cease? An hour later, I was
exhilarated, clearing my porch and its single long granite step with my new
orange plastic shovel, bought cheap and shaped like a scoop and much more
silkily serviceable than the cumbersome metal snow shovels of my childhood, with
their sticky surfaces and noisy bent edges. Plastic shovels are an
improvement-can you believe it? The world does not only get w ... read full excerpt from: Toward the End of Time ebook
