I found you in a basket of mallow skating across the great glass sea. You were Moses. You were any story. You grew to love stories and so I wrote. With each sentence your eyes deepened pillars of light spread out over water. The mountains shed their people lakeside. They brought you roots, hands black from the snow. You ate and your light grew. As winter thickened around us, the whalers came ashore fewer. They dragged their boats behind them. You asked for each of their stories and urged the lot to save their oil.