I am forsaking one story for another. I am jilting her, but I have done it before. I have jilted the women for the men. I have told the story of women before I have told the story of men but we are all the same in the end and we need not wring our hands over our separate parts, over who is best and who is last. Once we were all attached and an umbilical cord ran through us and we were children of several attachments. In the Garden of Eden no one saw the difference between you and me, me and you and the whispering trees. We shared silky whispers and they passed through us as light passes through the glow worm: through God and you and me and the lambent trees. And we were made of green light and whatever you conceive that First Thing to be several call God. The Holy Order, the way things happen to be; the order of seeing and being and the way we hold hands to create a circle. Around our Holy Stones, our Holy Thrones.

One June night -- it was the solstice -- Pond Man made a circle of stones around his house. Then he lit a circumference of candles and remembered her who believed she had loved him, although he knew it was but the shadow of an idea. A ghost crossing the grass, a kindly apparition gently stalking, a deer. For Pond Man was dear to her and she to him but he never felt back the way she believed she did in the shadows of love. Love’s gossamer throw.

So he shrugged his shoulders and they departed because the summer had come to an end and the Lady realised she already had a father in heaven which on earth she took to be a husband. It is a convenient thought although like many thoughts it is not true. Still, there was much kindness to be had there in the House of Henry.

And see how easy it is to sound knowledgeable, to sound historical, to sound wise and truthful when I am merely spilling out the contents of my heart in the hope that Pond Man is listening. Pond Man, my intercessor, the priest in the church of my own making. The crucifix I build day to day as I pad back and forth over the boards thinking and thinking, always thinking. And oh how they creak, my boards without the nails fastened. And how the wind and the rain exaggerate their slipperiness, my weak wrist, the spilt oil, my failure to screw them down. My thoughts covered in oil.