“No cock’s crow before the dawn. Just silence beyond the cedar gate, the outhouse and the cedar door that still smelled green like the ribbon on the maypole spreading its wings in the meadow, thick with years, the first ribbons buried, the color white forgotten. Two brass cups engraved with beheaded hens. A buck stared at us from the edge of the shining woods, and we invited his eyes inside our ring of light, but he refused to come.
Was that music?”