When, seventeen years later, I return, I discover my fatherwalks faster than I can keep pace, knowing more than I doabout what time means and what distances we mustcross. Seeing him round the lake's edge, as if alone, withoutthe anomaly of my presence, I want to ask him: Whotaught you to look at a bird? When did you first recognize meas your own? The first time I lost him was in the marketwhen I took the hand of a man who was himuntil he looked down with another face. I was afraid then,too. Now I stop on the path.All the long minutes of my absence materialize, pulsewith each step he takes toward the rest of the world.Who is abandoning whom?Strangers pass around me, they to whom I have no obligation.Now the man that is him stops, too, and not findingme, makes his way back through the crowdtoward where I wait. When he sees me,who will I be?