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54 Equinox At the dream’s weeded fringe the crone pauses, asks which of us now is the one who cannot follow? For years, I’ve walked the shaded circles with her, led by the crooked branch of her finger. Now I lay my infant daughter down on a blue tarp over rotting leaves and curled sleeves of birchbark as she stares up through the bruiseberry tree. Purple buds that scabbed the branch all spring are gone. New leaves sigh green and shyly rearranging. Pattered by their shadows, her face flickers quickly my face—a faint layer under her bolder gaze. Somehow I have locked us out, chasing after the older babysitter with the watch she’s forgotten and the wrong key. And suddenly, I am barefoot with a baby and wool work clothes in ninety degrees. At last, I am not waiting or surviving, but alive at the center of the woods that ring us while we sleep. ...

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