Saturday morning at the zoo, facing the lions’ cage, overcast sky and a light breeze carrying the smell of peanuts and animal dung, the peacocks making their stilted progress across the sidewalks. I was standing in front of the gorge separating the human viewers from the lions. The lions weren’t caged, exactly; they just weren’t free to go.

You could see windstorms and a piece of floating string
making their way to the school
for hours—you could watch the sun,

My life this autumn has been astonishingly busy and empty, thanks to a seemingly endless set of tasks for small outcomes. In the midst of all this, my stepfather died, at the age of 100. Somehow I thought he would never die. He was like a sphinx in the desert, always there, always posing riddles in my direction.