Where the path closed down and over, through the scumbled leaves, fallen branches, through the knotted catbrier,I kept going. Finally I could not save my arms from thorns; soon the mosquitoes smelled me, hot and wounded, and came wheeling and whining. And that’s how I came to the edge of the pond:black and empty except for a spindle of bleached reeds at the far shore which, as I looked, wrinkled suddenly into three egrets —-a shower of white fire! Even half-asleep they had such faith in the world that had made them —-tilting through the water, unruffled, sure,by the laws of their faith not logic, they opened their wings softly and stepped over every dark thing.