He
for peace.
fought
worked
He thought on homeland, the big timber, the air thin and chill all the year
long. Tulip poplars so big through the trunk they put you in mind of
locomotives set on end. He thought of getting home and building him a
cabin on Cold Mountain so high that not a soul but the nighthawks
passing across the clouds in autumn could hear his sad cry. Of living a life
so quiet he would not need ears. And if Ada would go with him, there
might be the hope, so far off in the distance he did not even really see it,
that in time his despair might be honed off to a point so fine and thin that
it would be nearly the same as vanishing.
yearned
prepared