Far Along in the Story

dreamed 2009 or before, by W.S. Merwin

The boy walked on with a flock of cranes following him calling as they came from the horizon behind him sometimes he thought he could recognize a voice in all that calling but he could not hear what they were calling and when he looked back he could not tell one of them from another in their rising and falling but he went on trying to remember something in their calls until he stumbled and came to himself with the day before him wide open and the stones of the path lying still and each tree in its own leaves the cranes were gone from the sky and at that moment he remembered who he was only he had forgotten his name