dance

Three days, three nights here at the lake. We are like slow-moving dancers in a new unlearned figure. We meet together then move apart, him to whatever he does here, me to duty; but in each circling one is still while the other leaves and returns. Then, reformed, we sit and talk and the stars or sun shift across the sky seen and unseen, sensed but unknown. For all that stone talks, I admit, he provides the most erudite company I have found since leaving. No ploughman then, for all his size and ill-kempt appearance. His eyes show the state of the weather within, sky formed. His low voice a slow movement of rock and stone, the gradual shift from introduction to question to an odd intimacy, the wearing of stone inperceptable by drop and drop of rain. I should beware of him, his subtle ease and manner bringing memories to fill the empty spaces delinated by lake and sky and distant mountains. I am too long alone, or alone with Godric - within myself, staring out - recording each disembodied day. Too long, so that against this weary backdrop of travel and uncouth accents, of the unwitting friendlessness of strangers, he forms a suddenly appearing still but animate point. There is no place for friendship, how could it be so for one such as I?