Homecoming We keep coming back to our animals. Miles crunched in the wheels' teeth, grassy hide of the highway shoulders, some kind of breath resisting the windshield. * The road doesn't insist upon a name, but we insist upon calling it something. It comes -- no, it arrives or almost delivers us. * The heat turned down before we leave because the house left behind is like the proverbial falling tree: practically nonexistent in our absence. The fish is frozen in its bowl; the dog is lonely; a blizzard is approaching, too cold to even growl. Andrea Defoe