Siftings

Suddenly the heart could burst with loving, and where there had been spoiling for a hate instead, the child and all heart's sister creatures congregate, as if to cross a sea - consolidate, as if they could not lose the spirit of true binding as it houses them and theirs. And so the new-filled houses, like places that will not drop their loving (knowing that there's always light to lose) close their doors against each would-be hate as if to barricade a raging sea and harbor from the night each fainting creature. What is stranger than the heart's strange creatures? What is crueller than the way it houses concepts deep-dredged from bottom of the sea that may at any moment in the loving surface - sharklike - to begin a hate until there's nothing left but love to lose? Cornered by the world, I could lose all track of heart's indwelling creatures, all memory of how I would so hate to bar them from the safety of their houses where, in pure sunbeams, tides of loving bind them to me. But the shifty sea Broods ready always to devour. The sea was treasure that I never dreamed to lose - my childhood love, put there for my loving, it peopled night and day with its own creatures, and through the years and in a score of houses I've heard its murmur, witnessed to the hate of storm against all reason and all calm. ''Hate!'' is what the breakers seemed to roar. ''I am the sea. I've washed away so many of your houses. What have I to lose?'' And though my house became one of its creatures, I still refused to leave my ocean-loving. What have I to lose if I can guard my loving - can people heart with its own loyal creatures?