July 5, 1955 11:30 p.m.
The house was hot.
I couldn’t sleep.
I got out of bed.
My father was in his study with the fan on.
My mother was nowhere to be found.
She was sitting on the steps of our front porch.
I came out and sat down.
No clouds. No moon.
A blazing panoply.
I witnessed my mother looking up.
This woman from whose body I was born
enraptured by the cosmic mother lode.
It’s so dark and still, I said.
Better to see and hear, she said.
So began the second life she gave me,
my philosophic life.