"The beach is cold now. The people are gone, the leaves blown into flattened heaps in hollow places. They put up a fence to catch blowing snow that has not fallen yet. He remembers hot sand and strong waves and throwing sticks at them."

"He is strong to lift and help. What do you think they’re delivering?"

"His new friend does not understand his words but bumps and moves and plays his own way. When he sits, leaves and sticks in the dirt stick to his tail when it rakes the ground. He is soft and alive."

"When he was little, he sat on a blanket and held the caterpillar. He’s happy, because he’s at the cabin. He’s warm at the cabin. He laughs because he’s at the cabin, because it doesn’t mean he’s sad. It means he’s happy."

"He knows about leaving. He knows you start one place and then go somewhere else. He is happy because he knows."

"He asks whether or not he knows about the tumbling harvest, still hanging fruit suspended just his height poised and lurching on woolen shoulders, picking good from bad, inspecting the work of others. And later, over applesauce, he asks about transformation."