soaked in it (including money
itself) so that from them money
could be squeezed. A great convenience,
no doubt. Too bad about its power
to pervert.... On such a day
as this, in such a place -- what a topic,
he'd thought, his eye alert once again
to any slight change portending
danger to the place: this narrow
road, grassy and weedy down
the middle, dwindling vaguely into
the trail up ahead, was a great threat....
down toward the stream, easing through
the stiff , abrasive chaparral, clambering
over boulders, crossing several gullies.
He was fi fty miles from home. Inventing
the wheel, Ford Madox Ford had written,
was where we had gone wrong. He'd laughed
when he read that. It had come to seem,
some forty years later, his consideration
of it fi tfully persisting, plausible.
He tried to recall the title of that book.
the quick indistinct movement, deep in the pool.
Getting out his binoculars he soon found
the two trout: six-inchers, like twins.
The fl oating leaves made excellent cover for
the pair moving slowly below them. Their bodies,
being the green of the clear green sunny water,
looked translucent, their shadows were inconspicuous
among the shadows of the leaves and of the fl at