I go out in the early morning rain in Galway, Ireland,
and tap the cobblestones with my white stick.

Immediately I get lost.

On my left there is a river.

On my right there is a window shutter making a kind of
funereal percussion.

“Songs of the Earth,” I think.

I am not unique.

I stand beneath the shutter and weep.

I am alone in a new city.

If I died here beside the river and the window maybe everything I’ve known would make sense in the gray of an Irish minute.

“Good-bye to the peregrine falcons,” I think.

Good-bye to the glass of water that contains a single daylily.

Farewell to Mahler on the radio late at night.

Don’t get me wrong.

I get lost in cities every week.

I have learned much by following, blindly, the whims of architects.