I wanted to write a story about the ocean deeps-why? Because they exist, and their unexplored charms are alluring. The most likely place an ordinary human would encounter the odd names and distant views of underwater features is flying above them. So it is logical to have our protagonist-our Virgil-peering out of a plane window at the unknown below.
The verse on the stone in the garden is an easily solved mystery if any reader cares to look into it. The author of the verse was Edward Taylor, a Colonial Congregational minister who lived and worked in Westfield, Massachusetts, from the sixteen-sixties until the seventeen-twenties. I very much like his wide-ranging mind, his rich poetry, and his uneasy metaphysical questing to make the natural world fit his religion. Quoted in this story are six lines from Meditation 14. These lines are a resting place for the reader to make of them whatever meaning suits.
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