How
can I define
competition?
Can a fish define
the sea? A bird sing
about the essence of
the air beneath its wings?
A flower speak to the qualities
of the soil from which it stems?

I have
a memory
that I struggle
to describe. A little
girl coloring, with crayons,
row after row after row of
wavering lines -- an ocean for
a ship cut out of paper -- a ship
In full sail -- the name Nina printed
on its bow in straggling penciled letters

Her lips
are parted
In a half smile.
She seems not to
hear the hubbub around
her, nor to see the changing
light outside the window, nor
to care whether the ship ever sails
or the picture ever hangs upon a wall.


The ocean
is what matters,
that deep, silent
ocean. It is as though
she is crayoning the colors
of her soul. Whatever competition
is, whatever it may mean, that child,
in that brief moment, was its opposite.









.