It was the blue hour. After his day out in the woods, Algy felt like some quiet contemplation, so he flew over to the shores of the great sea loch and found a perch on a lichen-covered rock overlooking the water. As he sat there silently, watching the ripples flow back and forth in shades of blue, he thought of all of you … and remembered this poem:

          Whenever I look
          out at the snowy
          mountains at this hour
          and speak directly
          into the ear of the sky,
          it’s you I’m thinking of.
          You’re like the spirits
          the children invent
          to inhabit the stuffed horse
          and the doll.
          I don’t know who hears me.
          I don’t know who speaks
          when the horse speaks.

[Algy is quoting the poem To the Reader: Twilight by the contemporary American poet Chase Twichell.]

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