In the place where wall meets damp wall, where shadows meet too, lessening and deepening but never melting away, in the place of permanent cool, behind hydrangea, there, back to the wall, a small child crouches, looking out secretly on the landscape of a suburban yard enshrined by stiff gray palings. Regards the curious cultivation of that place, the sweep of grass, always stubbed short, the straggly borders of the tentative, underblooming garden beds, and the few disparate trees. The sway and tilt of the yard with all its deliberate debris, the flung rope and toppled chair, the woven washing basket and the rustling dinted peg tin, oddments of her play. Sees the passers by screened by dark serrated leaves, assuming strangeness; the mother to and from the fluttering clothesline, the sister, barefoot, calling and unanswered. In the tempting loneliness, behind hydrangea, child chants soft chants against the dampish wall, amid the leaves and bobbing shadows and the pale blue, coral underbelly of the clumsy blooms around her. And tastes in the sweetness of this solitude, in the stillness and the quiet, behind the hydrangea, the future moment and the origins of grief. Parts the criss-cross stems astonished and runs willy nilly, wildly to join the peopled world.