I HAVE lived in many half-worlds myself . . . and so I know you.

I leaned at a deck rail watching a monotonous sea, the same circling birds and the same plunge of furrows carved by the plowing keel.

I leaned so . . . and you fluttered struggling between two waves in the air now . . . and then under the water and out again . . . a fish . . . a bird . . . a fin thing . . . a wing thing.

Child of water, child of air, fin thing and wing thing . . . I have lived in many half-worlds myself . . . and so I know you.