.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

I had closed a message to a friend with the semi-jocular suggestion that she “be good;” now, in the woods with the dog, I’m thinking that actually, seriously, that might be pretty good advice for me to follow myself, and I wrap my bowed, cotton-hatted head with my knuckles three times lightly, remembering my Lear (“Beat beat gates! Let thy wisdom in and thy folly out!”), thinking “be good.”

Now, like an echo to my own wrapping, I hear branches high above me knocking, three times or so, could almost be a woodpecker but more muted, maybe an old or weakened woodpecker, or a branch upon a branch — knock knock knock — (which makes me remember my Macbeth, the gate keeper or whatever he is, the morning after Duncan’s murder: “knock, knock, knock!”) — be good.

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