I have awakened her when the sky was at its blackest, all stars erased, no moon to speak of, and led her down the front path to our dock, where we'd swim to the raft, finding it by touch fifty or sixty strokes from shore. And sit listening to things, the movement of water around us drawing us closer, a hunched double knot of child and father hearing all there is to hear, close beneath bats who see without sight, whose hunger is fed by darkness. The neighbors see her often in the woods, on hands and knees, smoothing the moss where it spreads in the shade, marvelling at the tongues of birds, the stained petal of the dogwood, the vein of color skirting the edge of an upturned stone. This morning she awoke to the first flash of the magnolia, and will save the petals as they fall, their purpled lids curling white on the lawn. We meant to tell her how the rainbows come, how they close into shadows, how we would be there nonetheless; we meant to tell her before they arrived at supper this evening, rimming everything in sight. She wonders if we see them cupping the stars, the kitchen lamp, each other's face, and we say we do. The thud always awakens her where she sits at the living room window gathering a shawl tight at her neck, her fist a pale brooch, its veins hard and swollen. She has heard it every night since