All night an illness barred me from that loam-rich sleep we are now heir to, we who lie flat for eight hours in darkness, then rise, barely rested for half a sun, watch colour T.V. because the scientists and marketing executives tell us our ancestors had eyes cued to ripening fruit. Us, lazing on sun-drenched platforms, still marvelling at hand-me-down miracles like birth. Near dawn, I took the Word from the nightstand, and found myself soon with lantern-jawed humans, trapped in the deserts of our past, with deft fishnet-weavers, oracular fish, and rocks that gave water, spilling from pond to pond. Then, nodding in ricochet delight, I feasted on the spellbinding fruit You grow -- that way of beholding which is a form of prayer, and on the still, blue, spring morning, I knew I would carry its seeds to a seemingly ungodly place.